Theoretical approaches to the study of nurses' clinical reasoning: getting things clear

This paper attempts to clarify both the nature of clinical reasoning and the major theoretical underpinnings of studies that explore nurses' clinical reasoning. It includes a discussion of propositional and procedural knowledge ('knowing that' and 'knowing how') and their relationship in clinical reasoning. Prescriptive and descriptive and rational and phenomenological models are distinguished, and decision theory, information processing theory and (Dreyfusian) skills acquisition theory are discussed and compared.