Clinical Decision Making at the Bedside

The complexity and rapidly changing environment of health care places significant pressure on nurses. How nurses make decisions within this environment has been an area of inquiry in the literature. Clinical decision making Is the application of distinct thinking patterns and analysis of data at hand used to make judgements about patient care. Models of clinical decision making provide a foundation for understanding how nurses make decisions. Key factors associated with clinical decision making include experience, intuition, use of information and sources, and environment. Further work is needed to increase understanding of the processes by which nurses make clinical decisions.