AS A NURSE ARE YOU A CRITICAL THINKER?.

A critical thinking nurse should be able to gather information analyze the information and come up with their own ideas that will help to improve the life of patients, help patients and hospital save costs. Patient is supposed to be npo and there is no npo sign at patient door 🚪 go ahead and place the npo sign because you don’t want the cna or someone to feed the patient or serve the patient water.

Patient is at risk for fall but nobody saw the order and you did . Carry out the order and put the fall risk sign( yellow falling star)on the patient’s door, wear the patient yellow gown, yellow armband and yellow socks.Prevent falls as this will delay healing ,discharge and possibly death.

As a nurse you should not only collect information but must be able to compare information and know what makes sense.A good doctor like critical thinking skills nurses.For example if the WBC ( white blood cells)is high a critical thinking skills nurse must go and assess the patient by taking the temperature of patient to see it is elevated, and if it is notify the doctor apply cooling measures and medicate as ordered by the doctor.

A critical thinking nurse must be able identify doctors mistakes and notify the doctor. For example doctor might mistakenly order morphine sulfate for patient that is allergic to morphine sulfate and ask the doctor to discontinue morphine sulfate and order other types of intravenous pain medications such as dilaudid for the patient.

A critical thinking skills nurse should be able to know when the doctor wrote wrong orders for the wrong patient.Patient is not Diabetic and doctor orders to give NPH 10unit at bed time.This orders of insulin was meant for patient in room 30021 and not for patient in room 30012.

Nurse Managers should create conducive work environment to foster critical thinking skills and must model critical thinking skills behaviors so that the nurses will emulate.

Critical thinking skills encourages staff retention, efficiency, understanding and supportive staff that are actually working together as a team to benefit the patients and the hospital.

Critical thinking skills decrease surgical complications, reducing length of patients stay in the hospital. Critical thinking skills nurses make sure that procedures are done on time.Patient is NPO when the doctor or healthcare provider orders npo.

Critical thinking nurse make sure that there is consent in the chart and H and P are done before surgery.

Nurses please work in hospital environment that allows you to think critically because sometimes some nurses might not have the time to think talk less of thinking critically because of unfair assignment.

These behaviors of unfair assignment to other nurses are perpetuated by callous nurses that want you fired.Critical thinking is a must for every nurse.

So I ask do you think critically?.

Do you set priorities?.