Nursing today is a combination of many qualities and heavy responsibilities.  Aside from being considerate and professional when dealing with their patients, they have to be meticulous in their work and always in control of everything.  The quality of their patients’ treatment as well as the progress of their health fully depend on her ability to accurately evaluate their condition.  One of the most significant abilities that a nurse should possess to be able to make a difference in the patient’s condition is critical thinking.

Good nursing is defined by “critical thinking”

Many of you will probably raise a brow when reading “critical thinking” and nursing in the same sentence.  Any nurse worth her salt will have an extensive education and conventional training to rely upon in her work. However, all her training may come to nothing if she is unable to quickly assess, analyze and find solutions to any situations. 

The health, and more importantly, the life of her patients depend on her ability to understand and process concepts in a most effective manner.  Nurses provide hands-on care plus being held responsible for everything that they do, see and report.  When a patient reaches the emergency room, it is the nurse’s responsibility to see to the quality and speed at which that patient receives treatment.  It becomes their skills, and experience that will make the difference between in the quality of the patient’s care and the peace of mind of their families. 

A nurse’s responsibilities:

One of the nurse’s duties is to record all the particulars of a patient’s condition while receiving treatment.  When taking care of a patient, nurses must be very meticulous in their documentation of the case, since even the tiniest detail can help form a clear perspective and enhance the quality of the treatment.  Nurses may be responsible for management but most nursing classifications involve communication and organization.  The emergency room is one place where her communication and organizational talents can make the difference between life and death. 

Why critical thinking is the motor behind good nursing

Communication and organization are the keys to a smooth health-care assistance service. In order to ensure that, staff nurses must be able to quickly and accurately assess any given situation, as well as foresee any problems and find adequate solutions.  Along with the conventional training and education, to become a good professional, a staff nurse must also be a good organizer, must have good communication skills, and must be able to accurately and quickly evaluate and prioritize any problems.  Critical thinking is the process that allows the nurse to make successful use of all her qualities and abilities. 

As you can see, there are heavy responsibilities for the skilled nurse whether she is assisting or staff nurse or running the floor.  All of the duties of the nurse must be accurately documented, organized and assessed with precision.  Critical thinking as well as the ability to master language and concepts make the starting point in a successful nursing career.  Many people today who trust their health and sometimes their life in the capable hands of nurses and benefit not only from the considerate care, but also from their many skills and analytical abilities, must be thankful for the emphasis that is put on critical thinking in nursing training.

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To get a clear picture of what concepts stand for when it comes to present day nurses, you need to first understand concepts.  When you say concept, you actually say thought, or idea. It comes almost as natural as breathing and you deal with it on a daily basis in everything you do.  Concepts or ideas are a part of everyone’s experience and readily available to everyone alike.  What makes the difference between one person’s concepts and another’s is the way they conceptualize the ideas they come across or the thoughts they have. 

What does it mean to conceptualize?

The conceptualization of an idea implies a previous visualization or examination of that very idea, followed next by the thinking process.  Each person has their own specific way of conceptualizing an idea.  Sets of rules and all kinds of books have been written on how to conceptualize an idea, and on when is the best time or what is the best manner for it to be put into action.  When we begin to think about a concept it is then integrated into our reasoning processes. Our own individual reasoning processes.  Concepts can neither exist, nor be used without the help or other concepts. 

Concepts can be either your own personal thoughts or ideas, or they can come from outside sources, meaning other brains.  Even to explain a concept, you need the help of other concepts.  Let’s say, for instance, that you need to explain a concept like “walking in the street”. First of all, there is the concept of “street” that you use, then the concept of “someone moving in a certain direction at a slow steady pace”, which results in “someone moving in a certain direction at a slow steady pace in the street.”  To explain an idea or a concept, the concepts you use build on one another. 

Concepts are put on auto-pilot:

Most of the conceptualization that we do during the course of the day is so automatic that we are not really aware that we are conceptualizing a concept. You don’t take the time to think about the concepts involved in your daily actions and intentionally analyze them.  Whenever you are walking in the street, do you stop to think about it?  There are a lots of concepts you will be conceptualizing and actively analyzing when walking in the street, such as cars rushing by, street-crossing, people bumping into you, but not the action of walking itself. 

Society gives labels to experiences in life.  Because of this, we see less in specifics and more in terms of overall concepts.  If you take the concept of “family”, for example, you won’t process it as the mother and the father and the children and grandparents. It will be just plain “family”.  We look at sunrises and see only sunrises, not the whole set of concepts it involves, like the sun rising, the sky, the color of the sky, etc.  Most concepts are those that society has dictated as norm.  Concepts are something we have heard of, learned of it or seen it at some point in our experience and they become part of our thinking processes. These automatic concepts are then learned and accepted ideas but not original ideas.

So how does this apply to nursing?

Nursing students have to be taught about the process of critical thinking and how the human mind works and how much power there is in critical or analytical thinking.  It is imperative for a nurse to develop this most useful and necessary ability and hone it with a constant flow of information and practice.  The ability to conceptualize the constant flow of information that comes with nursing work, is vital and needs to be mastered.  It is essential for nurses to be able to process the concepts they meet with in terms that go against the norm.  If critical thinking is a quality they lack, nurses may become short-sighted when it comes to finding different solutions to their patient’s problems, thus not being able to provide the best care or sometimes even endangering the patient.

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