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:The Role of Intuition in Clinical Judgment Cognitive continuum theory: All judgments include both intuition and analysis Intuition = gut feeling or insight Analysis = study or reasoning Nurses sometimes use intuition in making judgments Nurses are more likely to use intuition in stressful situations 7
Slide notes:The cognitive continuum [COG-nih-tiv con-TIN-u-um] theory states that all judgments are based on a combination of both intuition and analysis. Intuition means a gut feeling or insight that is not based on facts. Analysis in health care means careful reasoning about all patient information to determine the nature of the illness and what the next steps should be. Nurses do sometimes use intuition to make decisions about patient care. Research shows that nurses decisions tend to be more intuitive when they are under time pressure and are dealing with situations that are complicated and unclear. Conversely, nurses decisions tend to be more analytical when they are dealing with situations that are structured and clear. Even if a nurse uses more intuition than analysis to make a clinical decision, he or she needs to be able to explain the reason for the decision. 7