Reaction Paper

JOURNAL REACTION

FACTORS FACILITATING AND INHIBITING EFFECTIVE CLINICAL DECISION-MAKING IN NURSING: A QUALITATIVE STUDY by Hagbaghery, Salsali and Ahmadi, 2004.

PRELUDE
The increasing complexity and dynamism of the healthcare environment, the high workload of nurses given the number of patient assignment, the advent of the interdisciplinary patient care – all require a nurse who can easily sift and synthesize information, come up with a decision and act according to this decision, rooted upon a vast array of knowledge, rich experiences, and competent nursing skills. In other words, the realities of the present require no less than a nurse who can make effective clinical decisions. The practice of effective clinical decision-making, however, is not as easy as it may sound.   Although the nursing profession has established its place and its importance in rendering holistic and quality patient care compared to, say, 30 years ago, several issues affecting nurses’ effective clinical decision-making remain a challenge to the profession. What then, are these factors? Are they intrinsic or extrinsic in nature? Do they serve to facilitate the nurses to make effective clinical decisions or act as barriers, preventing them from doing so? If there are barriers, what strategies can be made to address them? How can we promote the factors that facilitate nurses’ effective clinical decision-making? With these questions in mind, I sifted through the journal, in the hopes of finding the answers.

REACTION
An unbelievable nurse-ratio of roughly 15:1, staff nurses who busily carry out doctors orders, lack of a close nurse-patient relationship, very limited resources for patient-care – as distressing as it may seem, this is the scenario one might typically find in the busy charity wards of our very own, Philippine General Hospital, exemplifying the challenges that our nurses have to confront with, daily, in their professional lives. This is also the picture I had in mind as I read... [continues]

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