Critical Thinking Skills for Healthcare Professionals

Critical thinking involves a commitment to lifelong learning. This mindset of learning is often associated with healthcare careers. Physicians, nurses and other medical staff require concise and sound decision-making processes. Critical thinking does not come naturally but takes practice and concentration to focus on information that is presented.

Definition

• Stacy Walker, researcher of "Active Learning Strategies to Promote Critical Thinking," describes critical thinking as the ability to utilize reflective skepticism during judgment (see Reference 2). Norris and Enis, authors of "Evaluating Critical Thinking," describe critical thinking as the "disciplined, intellectual process of applying accurate judgment as a blueprint to an individual's decision making" (see Reference 6). Healthcare workers often require critical thinking skills to guide the thought processes to make a sound decision when the answer is not clearly defined in textbooks or research.

Relevancy

• Healthcare workers use relevancy as a critical thinking skill during decision making. Healthcare decisions require focused thinking that stays on topic and eliminates fragmented ideas. A healthcare worker must set aside outside factors or information when examining a specific issue. An example of this is a patient explaining to a nurse that he is having a specific symptom and the nurse begins to consider unrelated symptoms and questions the patient. The nurse needs to focus attention to the problem at hand and ignore intervening thoughts.

Different Perspectives

• Healthcare providers utilize different perspectives to ensure that diagnoses or solutions are considered thoroughly. Just as a patient may seek a second opinion of a surgeon, a physician often consults with others to avoid bias. Several questions that the healthcare worker should ask before a decision is made include: "What are the other viewpoints?" "Are there other perspectives I can look at this problem from?" "How can these perspectives be used in my decision making?"

Elements

• Critical thinking in healthcare contains eight factors that accentuate decision making, according to R.W. Paul who wrote "Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World." First, what is it the healthcare worker seeks to understand? Next, consider what the goal is. What will the healthcare worker do with the information learned? Review all perspectives of the solution or information. Set aside all assumptions of the topic or information on the subject before examining new perspectives or researched information. Use common healthcare principles and theories within reasoning. The healthcare worker should understand the reasoning or interpretations personally used. Gather and understand data that provide evidence from previous researched topics or studies. Finally, what are the consequences of the information or decision? (See Reference 3.)

Benefits

• Hanston and Jackson wrote in the 2004 book, "Clinical Delegation Skills: A Handbook for Professional Practice," that several things should happen when critical thinking skill are used in healthcare (see Reference 1). The organization should notice staff morale increases with decreasing turnover, increased patient satisfaction, decreased blame-games between staff members and increased problem solving abilities. With critical thinking patient care itself should improve, resulting in shorter stays, decreased visits to the hospital and fewer patient incidents of falling or injury.