What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World, Article Review Example

Professional nurses need critical thinking skills in order to effectively carry out effective and safe decision-making. They must be able to implement concepts, theories, and ideas evident in the extant literature to clinical practices, and developing their intellectual capacities enables them to become autonomous, self-directed clinicians who provide the most effective care to the patient on an idiosyncratic basis. According to the article entitled “Critical Thinking and Nursing,” critical thinking is an intellectual process that calls for an individual to apply dexterous rationality and reasoning in order to govern action or belief. Clinical decision-making is an integral part of a nurse’s job, as they must be able to think in a logical and systematic fashion while remaining open to both questioning and reflection with regards to the reasoning process. Doing so ensures that nurses provide quality and safe patient care. Critical thinking for nurse practitioners requires compliance with certain intellectual standards, the utilization of reasoning and rationality, a steadfast commitment to intellectual development, and the competent use of thinking abilities and skills in order to make sound judgment and decision-making within clinical contexts. Indeed, it is unequivocal that critical thinking skills are vital to nursing practices within modern contexts, especially because of the constantly evolving healthcare system. As such, a cogent examination of nursing within the modern day reveals the need for ad hoc approaches to clinical care and the necessity to treat patients on an idiosyncratic basis.

One interesting aspect of critical thinking is the discussion on intellectual traits and habits of thought, which explains how nurses can develop their critical thinking skills separate from their attitudes and personal dispositions. Critical thinking requires one to divorce their own beliefs, preconceptions, and personal opinions from rendering a judgment, which requires a nurse to take the time to fully understand an opposing viewpoint on a particular issue. Impartial, reasoned judgments made by nurses undergird competent medical practices. This requires constant questioning, reflecting, and monitoring of rationales for decisions made that impact nursing practices. Conversely, superficial and irrational thinking translates into bad decisions rendered regarding nursing practices. As such, critical inquiry is integral for safe nursing practices to be carried out. The author propagates the Socratic method within the critical thinking process in order to ascertain the most optimal nursing care practices. Indeed, constantly questioning nursing practices and clinical care facilitates improvement in nursing practices because difficult questions regarding clinical care can be ascertained through that process. Constant questioning and flexibility exhibits a sense of intellectual humility and pliability in order to enhance patient care and clinical practices. The constant desire to attain the truth is integral to the development of a nurse’s critical thinking, and at the core is tolerance for views that one disagrees with. I agree with this rationale because of the evolving nature of healthcare. I support an ad hoc approach to nursing and healthcare decision-making in addition to providing sound and up-to-date patient care rather than promoting a stringent approach to decision-making within healthcare settings. In addition, it is of paramount importance for nurses to abandon their subjective opinion about a course of action or about patient care because decisions must be made on an idiosyncratic basis depending on the patients’ circumstances and set of values and beliefs. As such, nurses need to eschew preconceptions and personal opinions in order to deliver the most optimal healthcare to patients.

References

Norris, S. P. & Ennis, R.H. (1989). Evaluating critical thinking. Pacific Grove, CA: Midwest Publications, Critical Thinking Press

Paul, R.W. (1990). Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World. Rohnert Park, California: Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique