Exam (elaborations)
Chapter 9. Think Like a Nurse Essential Thinking Skills for Professional Nurses
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- West Virginia School Of Osteopathic Medicine
Chapter 9. Think Like a Nurse Essential Thinking Skills for Professional Nurses
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Chapter 09: Think Like a Nurse: Essential Thinking Skills for Professional NursesMULTIPLE CHOICE
1. A faculty member explains to a class of nursing students that the primary goal of critical
thinking in clinical practice is to
a. compete with other health professionals.
b. create diverse theories of nursing practice.
c. determine an effective course of action.
d. judge the relative value of chosen actions.
ANS: C
Critical thinking in nursing is used to make sound clinical judgments and, after considering all
plausible alternatives, to determine course of action most likely to be effective.
Critical thinking aids the patient, whether that patient (client) is a person, a family, or a group.
It is used to meet the patient’s needs, not to compete with other health care professionals.
Critical thinking may be used when theorists examine the components of a theory in progress,
but this is not the primary goal.
Judging the value of actions, or evaluation, is part of the critical thinking process, but this is
not the goal.
DIF: Cognitive Level: Understand REF: 174 TOP: Nursing Process: Planning
MSC: NCLEX Client Needs: Safe and Effective Care Environment: Management of Care
2. The nursing student knows that critical thinking is
a. an innate trait, not a learned skill.
b. applicable only to nursing care.
c. generalizable across professions.
d. only needed for certain positions.
ANS: C
The goals of critical thinking are unique to nursing, but the process can be applied to many
disciplines and professions.
Critical thinking is a skill requiring certain knowledge and practice. Although some people
may be naturally better at it than others, all nurses can and should learn to use critical thinking
in practice.
The goals of critical thinking are unique to nursing, but the process can be applied to many
disciplines and professions.
All nurses need to use critical thinking skills in every position.
DIF: Cognitive Level: Remember REF: 176 TOP: Nursing Process: Planning
MSC: NCLEX Client Needs: Safe and Effective Care Environment: Management of Care
3. A nurse studying critical thinking theories can generalize the process as
a. a reflective process of gathering and evaluating data to choose a course of action.
b. one conceptual mechanism for critiquing ideas and establishing goal-oriented care.
c. researching best-practice literature to create care pathways for certain populations.
d. using the nursing process to design individualized and specific nursing care plans.
ANS: A
, Looking across theories and definitions of critical thinking, they all have in common the
ability to reflect on data and choose actions. Reflection also considers evaluating the result of
the actions to determine whether they were effective.
Although critiquing ideas and establishing goal-oriented care could be considered as part of a
generalized statement of critical thinking, this is not broad enough without the reflection and
evaluation.
Critical thinking would most likely be used to create care paths derived from best-care
literature, but this is not a generalized statement covering all definitions and theories of
critical thinking.
Critical thinking is used when engaging in the nursing process, but this is too narrow in focus
to capture the essence of critical thinking definitions and theories. Critical thinking is not
synonymous with the nursing process.
DIF: Cognitive Level: Synthesize TOP: Nursing Process: Planning
MSC: NCLEX Client Needs: Safe and Effective Care Environment: Management of Care
4. A student nurse asks how the nursing process is different from critical thinking. The best reply
by the faculty member is that the nursing process is
a. a tool for applying critical thinking to patient care.
b. merely the way nurses articulate patient care needs.
c. the only way to use critical thinking for best outcomes.
d. the same thing as critical thinking divided into steps.
ANS: A
The nursing process is the tool nurses use to operationalize their critical thinking judgments
about patient care.
Saying that the nursing process is merely the way nurses articulate patient care needs does not
differentiate between the two concepts, nor does it show any relationship between them.
Critical thinking can be used in many different ways, including systematically and without the
use of the nursing process.
Nursing process and critical thinking, although related, are not synonymous.
DIF: Cognitive Level: Understand REF: 179 TOP: Nursing Process: Planning
MSC: NCLEX Client Needs: Safe and Effective Care Environment: Management of Care
5. When the nurse is assessing a patient, the best action by the nurse is to
a. focus on assessment data collected with the five senses.
b. not rely on information from friends, who may be wrong.
c. use both primary and secondary sources of information.
d. use secondary sources to determine assessment priorities.
ANS: C
To collect a complete database, the nurse needs to use both primary and secondary sources of
information.
Physical assessment data are collected through the nurse’s five senses, but limiting data to this
severely restricts the database.
Significant others, including friends and family, are important secondary sources of
information about the patient.
Neither primary nor secondary sources of data should be considered solely to guide further
assessments. They are both valuable sources of complete information about the patient.
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