A study of decision making among U.S. psychiatric nurses

The purpose of this study was to describe psychiatric nurses' decision making and to test a Finnish instrument. A 56-item survey was mailed to 351 psychiatric nurses with a return rate of 48%. A varimax factor analysis showed 5 factors (intuitive, self-confidence, interpretive, collected information, and analytic processing) with alphas ranging from .71 to .85. Results indicate U.S. psychiatric nurses extensively use intuitive interpretive decision making and cultural bias needs to be considered when using a foreign instrument. Further research is needed to refine this instrument and describe psychiatric nurses' decision making.