During a clinical conference, a staff nurse states that critical thinking is essential when providing client care. What additional statements should this nurse make to support the use of critical thinking?

Question

1. "Patient acuity is so much greater than it was even 10 years ago."
2. "Care delivery systems are only as good as the nurses delivering care."
3. "Nurses have always relied on commonsense thinking to provide quality, appropriate nursing care."
4. "With health care being so expensive, nursing has to take on responsibility to keep the costs controlled."
5. "My practice involves caring for clients who require care that didn't even exist when I went to school."

Answer 1

Correct Answer: 1, 2, 4, 5
Rationale 1: Patients are sicker, with multiple problems, and so nursing care requires a more critical form of thinking in order to meet their nursing needs.
Rationale 2: Redesigning care delivery is useless if nurses don't have the thinking skills required to deal with today's world.
Rationale 3: Although this might be true, medicine and nursing have evolved tremendously, and so has the need for nurses to be critical thinkers.
Rationale 4: Consumers and payers demand to see evidence of benefits, efficiency, and results.
Rationale 5: Today's progress often creates new problems that can't be solved by old ways of thinking.