How to employ decision making theories as part of being an advanced Essay

How to employ decision making theories as part of being an advanced practitioner in critical care, compare and contrast theories - Essay Example Much technological evolution has taken place in the critical care segment which provides potential for significant improvement in health care. The key to good decision making is the understanding of existing demands of critical care and the ability to predict the likely effects of changing capacity and organization (Montgomery, Lipshitz and Brehmer, 2005). The changing capacity and organization can be measured by using a historical data and validating them with models at the individual level. Practitioners make important clinical decisions that have a great impact on the patient’s care and the performance of the nurses as well (Young, 2008). Changes in the technology development, health care settings and new methods of patient care have increased the importance of clinical decision making. In order to take care of patients, clinical decision making is widely used by nurses and practitioners. Clinical decision making is a phenomenon that is frequently used in many areas of prac tice which involves stages of patient assessment, determining, accepting or rejecting the diagnosis, and selecting the best care strategies for patients (Standing, 2008). Critical care is different from other areas of nursing and thus the importance of clinical decision making increases (Chapman and Sonnenberg, 2003). Nurses are dealing with patients whose conditions change rapidly. So time is a limitation in this case (Chitty, 2005). A recent study shows that nurse make decisions in every 30 seconds about one of the following incidents; nursing interventions, communicating information and evaluating the patient’s conditions (Rycroft-Malone and Bucknall, 2010). So decision making for them is dynamic and unpredictable. The Process of Decision-Making Clinical decision making requires the early development of hypothesis diagnosis (Ramezani-Badr, Nasrabadi, Nikbakht, Zohre and Taleghani, 2009). The further data collection will be aimed at either approving or disproving the diagno sis. Specialist practitioners are generally trained to think in a particular way. They use the evidence based system to in their decision making process (King, Duke and O’Connor, 2009). Medical evidence is not normally concerned with broader patient concerns but accepting it routinely influences clinical recommendations (Chiappelli, 2010). However, this does not preclude that additional information is not needed in order to provide a more complete profile of each patient. The diverse nature of information is potentially valuable as well as the quality of interaction between the team members (McGloin and Mcleod, 2010). Team decisions are expected to arrive at decision routes that are different from those taken by individuals working alone (Perkins, Jensen, Jaccard, Gollwitzer, Oettingen and Pappadopulos et al, 2007). This also has an ethical stance associated to it in terms of counterbalancing any personal judgments formulated (Morrison and Monagle, 2009). This is because indi vidual decisions are based on the narrow findings, so judgments can easily be covered by personal prejudice (Eccles et al, 2007). This will only serve the need of the practitioner more than the patient (Devettere, 2009). Effective vs. Ineffective Decision-Making Effective use of assessment information through decision making process is essential to improve the outcome of the critical care (Gambrill, 2005). The process of decision making can be seen from a variety of angles. Ineffective decision making may have serious