Essay - Nursing Practice Critical Thinking's Role in Perioperative Patient Safety Outcomes....

Nursing Practice

Critical Thinking's Role in Perioperative Patient Safety Outcomes.

The authors have carried out a study of nurses ***** the OR to ex*****mine the extent to which critical thinking is applied in an environment such as the OR ********** the effect that it had on the safety and care of the patients. It is hoped that this study will lead to recommendati*****s for improving the training of perioperative nurses that could increase patient safety even more.

The authors explain that ***** OR is chosen for ***** study is because ***** is "a complex system that combines personnel, technology, patients, and pharmacodynamics in a physic*****l environment coordinated to yield specific patient outcomes. In spite ***** education on the principles of intraoperative safety, implementation of ***** measures, and design ***** tools ***** quality assurance, patient injury continues to plague the OR." Despite the rigorous training and the availability of AORN Standards, Recommended Practices, and Guidelines, injuries still seem to occur during ***** care and treatment ***** *****. It is suggested ***** critical thinking may be the m*****sing element.

The definition of critical thinking used in the ***** was- "A domain-specific, disciplined *****, which is autonomous and unique to each nurse. It is initiated by a curiosity th*****t motivates nurses to seek answers to problems. Answers may ***** reintegrated into the nurse's memory to be used in future similar decision-making situations." The Model of Disciplined Thinking in Nursing Practice, developed by a previous researcher and validated by 450 nurse practitioners was modified and used in the study. This study set out to determine what are ***** nursing behaviors that exhibit critical thinking skills and whether the behaviors exhibit critical thinking about the patients' safety.

***** was a qualitative research ***** using participant observation as ***** main method ***** collecting data. ***** ***** w***** then analyzed phenomenologically to interpret the behavior from the subjects' perspective. The research was carried out in ***** perioperative service area of a 300-bed t*****ing hospital and regional level I trauma center in a mid-sized southwestern city of 200,000 people. The sample comprised five ***** ***** eight separate services who were subjected to short unstructured interviews as they performed their ***** responsibilities ***** specified observation periods. Field notes were also logged during these observation periods which l*****ted forty hours over a one-month period.

***** authors recognized that it is not easy to interpret ***** record thinking ***** and therefore they ********** behavior when a decision seemed to have been made and ***** interviewed the nurse after about their thinking process at the time of the action. Typical questions included, "Have you positioned a patient with this condition before?" "Why did you place the grounding pad on ***** body surface?" and "Where did ***** learn that particular technique or procedure?"

The data was coded ***** two groups- behaviors related ***** critical ***** and patient ***** (etic codes) and ***** ***** did not pertain to critical thinking in ***** safety outcomes (emic codes). On analysis the data showed that the majority