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Critical care nurses’ decision‐making activities in the natural clinical setting [Note 1. INFORMATION POINT: Nursing Career Structure ...]
Author(s) -
Bucknall Tracey K.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
journal of clinical nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.94
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1365-2702
pISSN - 0962-1067
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2702.2000.00333.x
Subject(s) - nursing , psychology , critical care nursing , natural (archaeology) , clinical decision making , medicine , health care , family medicine , archaeology , economics , history , economic growth
• This article reports on observation of 18 nurses in urban and rural based critical care settings. • The purpose of the study was to observe and describe the decision‐making activities of critical care nurses within natural clinical settings. • During the 2‐hour observation, the researcher dictated a detailed commentary on to audio‐tape of each nurse’s actions. Tapes were transcribed and subjected to content analysis. • Findings indicated three main categories of decisions. Decision frequencies were linked to nurses’ critical care experience, appointment level, and location, as well as nursing shifts. • The findings are discussed in relation to previous empirical evidence and the implications for practice. • The author concludes that future research should be directed towards measuring the contextual influences on nurses’ decision‐making on the outcome of patient care.