A nurse shows an understanding of the reasons critical thinking is so vital to today's nursing profession when stating:

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 common sense 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."


Correct Answer: 1,2,4,5
Rationale 1: According to R. Alfaro LeFevre's Top 10 Reasons to Improve Thinking, 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: According to R. Alfaro LeFevre's Top 10 Reasons to Improve Thinking, redesigning care delivery is useless if nurses don't have the thinking skills required to deal with today's world.
Rationale 3: While this might be true, medicine and nursing have evolved tremendously, and so has the need for nurses to be critical thinkers.
Rationale 4: According to R. Alfaro LeFevre's Top 10 Reasons to Improve Thinking, consumers and payers demand to see evidence of benefits, efficiency, and results.
Rationale 5: According to R. Alfaro LeFevre's Top 10 Reasons to Improve Thinking, today's progress often creates new problems that can't be solved by old ways of thinking.

Nursing

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Four hours after a total knee replacement, a 78-year-old client is found to have a heart rate of 110 bpm. The nurse should assess the client for:

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