Establishing an international network on nurses' clinical reasoning

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Clinical Reasoning
• Healthcare Education

Background:

• Literature review reveals diverse approaches to studying nurses' clinical reasoning across North America, Australia, and the UK.
• These approaches, including decision analysis, information processing, and skills acquisition theory, have distinct limitations.
• Current methodologies for exploring clinical reasoning in nursing are fragmented.

Purpose of the Study:

• To outline and critique various approaches to exploring nurses' clinical reasoning.
• To advocate for the conflation of these approaches to deepen collective understanding.
• To establish an international network of nurse scholars focused on clinical reasoning.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of existing approaches to nurses' clinical reasoning.
• Conceptual analysis of decision analysis, information processing, and skills acquisition theory.
• Description of the formation and progress of an international network for nurse scholars.

Main Results:

• Identified chronological clustering and limitations of different approaches to nurses' clinical reasoning.
• Proposed that integrating diverse methodologies enhances understanding of clinical reasoning.
• Initiated an international network to foster collaboration and comparative research in nursing clinical reasoning.

Conclusions:

• Conflating diverse approaches to nurses' clinical reasoning can deepen collective understanding.
• An international network is crucial for advancing knowledge and comparative research in this field.
• Facilitating international collaboration is key to the growth of nursing clinical reasoning scholarship.