Question

Define critical thinking and evidence-based practice.Discuss what critical thinking in nursing practice entails and explain why it is important. Discuss the role of critical thinking and evidence-based practice as they relate to patient outcome.

Answer 1

Critical thinking: It is an important part of healthcare team as it helps to identify the issue and immediately find the possible solutions associated with it. Even preventive action should also planned so that next time when we encounter any such condition the action or decision making time should be reduced. Clinical judgments are decision based on facts and previous knowledge that is taken by team by understanding the risk and outcomes associated with it. In an interdisciplinary healthcare team each member of the team must support each other decision.

Critical thinking in nursing practice:

The nursing practice and nursing education has undergone revolutionary changes throughout the times. Evidence-based practice has emerged as the gold standard of care in nursing. Critical thinking, the nursing process, and evidence-based practice are the most important process that should be done in order to care a client. Among these, the first is critical thinking and this is very important in analyzing the patient problem and taking decision or action according to it. Taking a wrong step in this aspect may leads to a deadly risk to the patient. Coming to the nursing process, assessing, diagnosing, planning, implementing and evaluation are the key steps. These five steps come under nursing process and these steps will be taken for a patient in order to analyze the condition and taking care according to it. EBP is also one of the most important practices because, in order to take a decision, perfect research evidences and also with the integration of clinical experts decisions should be taken for the patients care.

Critical thinking and evidence-based practice relate to patient outcome:

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a patient-centered approach and lays its foundation on independent scientific research by nurses, clinical expertise and patient experiences. It is a problem-solving approach that integrates the internal and external influences on practice and critical thinking into the best available scientific evidence with the best available experiential (patient and practitioner) evidence in the judicious application of such evidence to the care of individual patients, a patient population, or a system.The healthcare providers who utilize EBP must consider the recent healthcare research while determining the course of care and treatment. Altogether the practice must be based on the evidence of its efficiency. As a nurse, while implementing, EBP, I will try to unify research evidence with clinical expertise and encourage individualization of care through the inclusion of patient preferences. Thus based on the preference of patient and clinical expertise, I may try to give a drug that has been newly approved by the FDA to my patient for a disease such as cancer.