Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Abstract

Nurses��? clinical judgments and decisions have the potential to help health care systems distribute resources efficiently, prevent harm, and promote health achievement and patient benefit. The core characteristics or competencies of nurses included are: clinical judgment, advocacy and ethics, collaboration, professionalism, communication, cultural components, as well as facilitation of learning. Clinical judgment is one of the key attributes of professional practice. It is a prerequisite for establishing professional identity and is mainly based on nurses��? knowledge and experience as well as their reasoning, intuition, clinical thinking, and evidence-based practice skills. Evidence from healthcare systems around the world suggests that judgments made by nurses could be improved and we need to know more about nurses��? judgments, the interventions likely to improve their decisions, and outcomes. In this qualitative study we aimed to explore the process of Iranian nurses��? professionalization in clinical judgment. The data were collected based on semi-structured interviews and the study included 24 participants. Data analysis was carried out concurrently with data collection using the grounded theory method. The study findings revealed that the participants employed different strategies for becoming professional in clinical judgment development. These strategies constituted the core category of the study, which was ��?struggling for becoming professional in clinical judgment��?. To the best of our knowledge, none of the previous studies had explored the process of professionalization in clinical judgment. However, several studies have reported some of the properties and strategies of professionalization in clinical judgment. The findings provided critical information about nurses��? professionalization in clinical judgment. Accordingly, the participants adopted different strategies to develop their clinical judgment ability. Integrating these strategies into nursing theory and clinical education can improve nurses��? clinical judgment ability especially in the field of palliative care.

Biography

Email: m_salsali@hotmail.com