The process of decision-making by emergency nurses

The manner in which emergency nurses make decisions is a fundamental component of their practice but has not been widely researched. A review of nursing literature revealed that the decision model used by nurses in other clinical areas was a hypothetico-deductive method of clinical reasoning. It appeared cogent to determine whether the hypothetico-deductive decision-making theory held true for emergency nursing. Accordingly, the overall objective in this study was to establish the method of decision-making used by emergency nurses. A modified grounded theory framework was chosen to validate the model put forward by White et al. Three participants, all clinical nurse specialists, were given five clinical situations to respond to and asked to describe and discuss their thoughts when arriving at a diagnostic conclusion. The results demonstrated that the use of the hypothetico-deductive model of clinical reasoning, utilising verbal, non-verbal and other sources of information, was used by clinical nurse specialists in the emergency setting.