Institute:Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Workforce Training Curriculum
Component:The Culture of Health Care
Unit:Nursing Care Processes
Lecture:Nursing process including clinical judgment and patient assessment; legal and societal expectations; and roles in improving patient care
Slide content:Clinical Judgment A skill that helps nurses assess and treat patients Includes Gathering health information by asking questions, examining the patient, and other means Learning about other issues that affect the patient, such as cultural values Used in the nursing process 5
Slide notes:Clinical judgment is a skill that nurses and other health care providers use to learn what health problems a patient has. Nurses also rely on clinical judgment in deciding how to manage those problems. When a nurse first works with a patient, he or she might not have much information about what is wrong. The nurse can find out what is wrong by observing the patient, asking questions of the patient or the patients family, looking at the patients chart, examining the patient, and interpreting all of this information. A nurses clinical judgment does not depend only on technical and scientific skills, however. The nurse also relies on his or her perceptions and gathers non-health information. For example, the nurse might need to learn how the patient and the patients family feel about the health problem, what their social situation is, what their coping skills are like, and what their cultural values are. Nurses use clinical judgment as part of the nursing process, which is a systematic way of treating patients. The nursing process is explained later in this lecture. 5