Critical Thinking - Clinical Decision Making and Professional Developme

Question: Discuss about theCritical Thinking, Clinical Decision Making and Professional Development. Answer: Introduction Following the issues in the hospital, I only have three people to help handle them: the ward clerk, an enrolled nurse who is not yet competent and an Assistant in Nursing (AIN). However, deciding the right person to address an issue is also challenging. Therefore, it requires me to think critically and employ clinical decision making so that I may delegate the duties properly (Bailey, 2002). Of course, the available personnel are not equally qualified. This implies that there are duties that one individual can handle, which may not be treated by the other. Besides, I cannot address all the emergency issues at the same time by myself. Therefore, I am forced to assess the situations according to priority and delegate them to the required individuals. In real sense, a patient who collapses and gets unconscious yet initially had a facial surgery is a case which must be attended to immediately with the right person. As such, being an expert in this field, I would be the only person who would achieve this and succeed in it. Therefore, this would be the task to attend to first immediately after giving the other duties to the other individuals. Upon my evaluation, I would ask the enrolled nurse to attend to Mrs. Smiths visitor in the ward who is reported to have fainted. Fainting is simply a short-term loss of consciousness, which could be as a result of emotional stress (Mok, Wang Liaw, 2015). Of course, the enrolled nurse would be the right person for this because it is not a serious issue. Besides, she will be in a position to handle the problem, find out the reason behind it, and further counsel the victim to avoid such issues from cropping up again. In addition to that, it will enable the nurse to get more knowledge and experience on how to deal with such emergencies. Second, Mrs. Chews case is also critical. The fact that she has missed her 14.00 hours IV antibiotic also proves that the situation is beyond the other staff members. Therefore, this is an issue which should get attended to by an expert or the assistant who have the privilege to work in the state (Hartigan, 2016). Being that it is a problem that cannot also wait, I would, thus, give this responsibility to the assistant in nursing, whose role is to help the enrolled nurses and the registered nurses to provide overall patient care. Third, the ward clerk may be in a position to handle two of the issues. Firstly, I would ask him to cancel Mr. Esposito sign out from the hospital because he is yet to complete his medication. Secondly, he will have to look for the plumbers and ensure the issue of the blocked toilets gets resolved fast. The reason for having two responsibilities is that canceling a sign out is simple and can be done fast. Besides, it is his duty to ensure all patient records are secured and completed in the right way. Last, immediately after attending to the unconscious patient, I can then create time to discuss the medical error with the surgical consultant. Once an error has occurred, there is nothing much to be done about it (Odell, 2015). Therefore, I would not give it a priority over the other issues. References Bailey, S. (2002). Decision making in health care: limitations of the substituted judgement principle. Nursing Ethics, 9(5), 483-493. Hartigan, C. (2016). Scope of Practice. Critical Care Nurse, 36(5), 70-72. Mok, W. Q., Wang, W., Liaw, S. Y. (2015). Vital signs monitoring to detect patient deterioration: An integrative literature review. International Journal Of Nursing Practice, 2191-98. Odell, M. (2015). Detection and management of the deteriorating ward patient: an evaluation of nursing practice. Journal Of Clinical Nursing, 24(1/2), 173-182.