Planning by expert and novice nurses in cases of varying complexity

The question addressed in this study was: what are the relationships among task complexity and nursing expertise and the planning processes of generating, evaluating, and choosing alternative actions? Eleven hospice nurses, six experts, and five novices were asked to think aloud as they developed drug administration plans to control patients' pain in three hypothetical cases of varying complexity. The results indicated that subjects varied the number of alternative actions generated and their approaches to alternative evaluation as functions of task complexity. Experts generated more drug alternative actions, were more specific in evaluating alternative actions, and developed better plans than did novices.