THE EFFECT OF THE TEACHING OF DECISION ANALYSIS ON STUDENT NURSES' CLINICAL INTERVENTION DECISION-MAKING.

Description

The practice of nursing requires that nurses continually make clinical decisions. Clinical judgment is a complex process that makes use of an enormous body of facts along with certain decision making processes in order to arrive at desired decisions regarding patient care. This study evaluates the effectiveness of teaching student nurses' decision analysis on students' clinical intervention decision making. The relationship between demographic variables and correct clinical decision making was also tested. The approach used by the students' in both the experimental and control group in attaining the clinical intervention decision was also examined. Sixty-eight third and fourth year university nursing students formed the sample for this study. A post-test quasi-experimental design was used. The nursing students in the experimental group (N = 37) received a four hour didactic and interactive teaching on decision analysis. The nursing students in the control group (N = 31) received a sham intervention. From this study, the results indicate that student nurses in the experimental group made more statistically significant (p $<$.0001) correct clinical intervention decisions and made them with more consistency than student nurses in the control group. No statistical relationship (p $<$.05) between demographic variables and correct clinical intervention decision making were found. The experimental and the control group used statistically significantly different (p $<$.05) approaches in making their clinical intervention decisions. It was shown that the experimental group, who were taught decision analysis, applied this systematic approach when making clinical intervention decision making. In this study, findings would suggest that the use of normative decision making approaches resulted in more optimal clinical intervention decision making than clinical intervention decisions obtained without the use of normative decision making approach.

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