26 Jan DQ2 After completing the

BSN436 Developing Nursing Practice

Module 1 Discussion

DQ1 Assessment of the patient is critical to providing safe, high quality nursing care. Yet, often we have so many procedures to perform, medications to administer and other tasks to complete that we do not stop to critically assess the patient. Consider the following in your discussion:

What assessment processes do you use in your daily nursing practice?

Are the processes more of a systems checklist or do they truly involve the synthesis of information that involves reflection and critical thinking?

How can you reconsider personal habits and cognitive processes and make sure to include critical thinking in the assessment process?

DQ2 After completing the Critical Thinking Inventory on pages 341-345, share what you found out about your own critical thinking skills that relate to “confidence”, “intuition”, “discrimination” and “predicting”. Use examples from your nursing practice or experience to discuss how you may be able to improve your critical thinking.

For example, share how you currently consider specific assessment data and how you may be able to improve the critical thinking process to improve patient outcomes and quality of care. Example:

Mr. Jones appears fine, his vital signs are stable, heart rate is slightly irregular, but he calls the nurse frequently to ask questions that do not relate to his diagnosis of atrial fibrillation. He seems very “needy.”

Reflect on the patient, his previous history of heart problems, considering that his anxiety level may be high due to possible complications from the atrial fibrillation (stroke) or other issues.

Create an action plan to talk with him about his condition, his previous experiences with his health care, and answer all questions that he may have.