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Clinical Lessons from Literature and Legend
Author(s) -
Molde Susan,
Ginnetti John
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
image: the journal of nursing scholarship
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.009
H-Index - 80
eISSN - 1547-5069
pISSN - 0743-5150
DOI - 10.1111/j.1547-5069.1983.tb01348.x
Subject(s) - action (physics) , variety (cybernetics) , set (abstract data type) , legend , verifiable secret sharing , epistemology , psychology , law , sociology , computer science , history , political science , philosophy , artificial intelligence , art history , physics , quantum mechanics , programming language
Clinicians make decisions and then suffer the consequences along with their patients. In this article some principles of clinical judgment are presented with a light touch. Clinicians learn early in their practice that the questions that come to them are of two kinds: those that have verifiable answers and those that do not. Questions of the first kind present relatively little difficulty, even for the novice, since these are questions of fact. Questions of the second kind are more unsettling. These are questions of clinical judgment, that is, problems that have more than one defensible solution because necessary information is either incomplete, conflicting, or unobtainable (Benbassat & Cohen,1982). To ease the uncertainty that inevitably results from realizing that decisions must be made and action taken even when data are faulty, we offer the following set of principles, collected from a variety of sources, including James Thurber, Alexander Pope, Willie Sutton, “Samuel Shem,” Ronald Reagan, “Voltaire Cousteau,” and David B. Melchinger. Then, too, we have added a bit from our own experiences. Get it right or leave it alone. The conclusion you jump to may be your own.