Critical Thinking in Nursing Process and Plan of Care Essay

Introduction

The critical thinking in the nursing process influences how the nurses make their decisions about the patient care. The decision making is a skill that differentiates a professional nurse from the technical staff. Critical thinking requires the nurses to learn how to question as well as to find the available viable alternatives (Zuriguel et al. 2015). A professional nurse can achieve the goals for critical thinking in the nursing process through being flexible in clinical decision making, reflection on previous knowledge and practices, making efforts to identify the nature of the problem and choosing the best solution for patient's health. In nursing practice, critical thinking is identified as discipline-specific, the thoughtful analysis procedure that direct the nurses in the creation, implementation, and evaluation of methods for dealing with patient care and specialized concern.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Critical thinking in nursing is purposeful and directed towards achieving suitable outcomes. The critical thinking practice is also improved by precise skillfulness, knowledge, and experience acquired. Critical thinking process should be guided by the outlined principles and codes of nursing ethics, and the scientific methods established. The phases of nursing practice comprise of the assessment, problem analysis, and identification, the planning phase, implementation of the planned interventions and evaluation. The nursing process should be vibrant and suitable for decisive judgments about individual reactions.

The assessment stage is the initial operation where subjective and objective data of the patient is collected. The analysis and identification of the problem included validating the collected data and compared with norms to identify the problem. The nurses can use knowledge from biological sciences to observe relationships to identify problems. Under the planning phase, the nurses are required to identify the patient's goals and determine the available methods to achieve those goals. The implementation of the planned interventions is a process that entails carrying out of the nursing orders. The evaluation stage is the final segment of the nursing practice where the progress of the patient is examined about the set goals and the established criteria to determine whether the goals have been achieved.

The Case Study

The assessment phase

The assessment phase includes a collection of information or data about the patient. The objective and subjective data are collected. The subjective data represents the symptoms as explained by the patient. The subjective data include the history of the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and that the client seemed to develop pneumonia. The objective data represents other data collected through observation and examination of the patient. The objective data included observation of thick secretion and coughing.

The analysis phase

The analysis phases include identification of the source of the problem. Ineffective airways clearance related to thick secretion.

The planning phase

The planning phase identifies both short term and long term goals to assist the patient in achieving the necessary health objectives. The short-term goals included to assist the client in loosening secretion using the current practices set by the nursing standards. The long-term goals include easing the client's postoperative course.

The implementation phase

The implementation phase includes carrying out nursing orders to achieve the set health goal of the patient. The patient is encouraged to cough out secretions and abdominal breathing.

The evaluation phase

The evaluation phase includes an assessment of the patient's progress to determine whether the patient is achieving the desired progress under short-term and long-term goals.

References

Zuriguel Perez, E., Lluch Canut, M. T., Falco Pegueroles, A., Puig Llobet, M., Moreno Arroyo, C., & Roldan Merino, J. (2015). Critical thinking in nursing: Scoping review of the literature. International journal of nursing practice, 21(6), 820-830.