An Exploration of Nursing Students' Clinical Decision-Making Process

PURPOSE: This study was carried out descriptively and retrospectively with the purpose of determining nursing diagnoses used by intern students in their clinical practice. METHODS: The study data were obtained by checking the care plans of the internship files of 248 students studying at a nursing faculty. FINDINGS: The students determined 77 different nursing diagnoses in 13 domains of North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA)-I taxonomy II. The total number of nursing diagnosis used in the care plans was 1,469. CONCLUSION: Most of the diagnoses determined by the students were in the "safety/protection" domain; however, they determined no diagnoses in the "life principles" domain.