Help with critical thinking skills

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Jan 17, 2010

i always advise that students as part of the critical thinking take these factors into account:

the medical disease involved, it's normal pathophysiological progression and the signs and symptoms associated with the pathophysiological changes. learn the progression of symptoms as they go from mild to serious to fatal. this helps you determine priorities of care.
know the medical tests and treatments that the doctor is going to order. know which tests and treatments fit which each sign and symptom (again this helps determine priority of what gets done first). some of these tests and treatment will impact the nursing care you will give.
know the steps of the nursing process, i cannot stress this enough. there are five of them: assessment, determining problems, planning care, implementation and evaluation. one of the most confusing is assessment because it is step #1 of the nursing process and the word "assess" is also frequently used in nursing interventions which are part of step #3 of the nursing process which is the planning step. assessing as an intervention is not quite the same as the full-blown assessment you do when you first encounter the patient in order to plan care; it's more of a monitoring/evaluation/observation thing when it's an intervention. each step of the nursing process is a photograph, a link in a chain; another link later on may be appropriate as well.
there are many kinds of principles behind nursing actions (i.e., principles of asepsis, principles of osmosis, infection process, etc) that you need to know and sometimes pull into determining the answer to a problem you are trying to solve. this is where you sometimes cannot discount the science or math you learned before. something as simple as heat coagulates protein helps you to know that it is the underlying principle of steam sterilization in the killing of bacteria.
bottom line. . .you always have to be thinking "why". why would this be happening to the patient? why would the doctor order this? why would i do this? why? why? why? answer that, and you'll be thinking critically.

knaussie · Jan 17, 2010

I'm a 1st semester nursing student. I notice that I struggle with many of the critical thinking questions as well. I am so use to all mutiple choice questions in the pre req's. I try to answer the critical thinking questions in my text books and I struggle and am not sure that i am correct ( I cant really ask my instructor either b/c the one class is online).