Abstract
Clinical judgement is a complex process and a significant component of critical care nursing practice. It is recognised as essential to safe critically ill patient outcomes. The development of competence in critical care nursing students to ensure the practice of safe clinical judgement is an integral facet of critical care nursing education. Given the ever-changing, fast-paced and high-technological critical care practice environment, the role of the critical care nurse educator in the facilitation of safe clinical judgement to critical care nursing students cannot be emphasised enough. The critical care education environment includes the critical care practice environment. Prospective advanced critical care nurse practitioners practice mostly on a twelve-hour shift in the critical care practice environment where room for error is not admissible – the critically ill patient is at the hands of those practitioners taking care of them. Possessing the salient features of clinical judgement becomes mandatory. As critical care nurse educators endeavour to assist critical care nursing students towards practices that ensure safe critically ill patient outcomes, a need to better understand the facilitation of clinical judgement has become apparent.
This qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual study examines how clinical judgement is facilitated in the critical care nursing education environment of South Africa (Phase One) by the use of an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) method. A total of 32 critical care nurse educators participated in three focus group interviews. Data were analysed by the researcher and an independent coder using Giorgi’s phenomenological method. The research findings revealed critical care educators’ esteem for the facilitation of a meaningful critical care education environment to embed Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), reflective practice skills, clinical reasoning ability and inclusive caring practices as fundamental aspects for clinical judgement. Furthermore, the research findings revealed the facilitation of pedagogy of connectedness to evolve clinical judgement through inculcating clinical judgement practice ability and generating clinical judgement practical wisdom. A conceptual...
D.Cur. (Nursing Education)