Clinical Wisdom and Interventions in Acute and Critical Care, 2nd Edition

This book presents a way of thinking about clinical inquiry, reasoning, judgment, and experiential learning in clinical practice. It illustrates the educational implications by providing a thick description of nurses’ thinking-in-action and reasoning-in-transition. The book provides a window to central areas of experiential learning required for the development of expertise in nursing practice. Throughout the book, numerous and varied suggestions and examples are provided to assist in the development of nurses toward expertise. Critical and acute care nursing practice is intellectually and emotionally challenging. The book describes two pervasive habits of thought and action in Chapters 2 and 3, clinical grasp and clinical forethought, and then nine domains of practice, in Chapters 4 through 12. While the fourth chapter provides a brief description of the clinical judgment and skillful interventions of excellent nurses as they manage the physiological functions of acutely and critically ill patients, the fifth illustrates how comforting patients forms a backdrop for clinical judgment. Encouraging family involvement in care-giving activities is an essential aspect of family care. Acute and critical care clinicians normally believe that patients who are dying should be admitted to palliative or hospice care. Chapter 11 describes the frontline system design and repair done daily by expert nurses, and chapter 12 presents a view of leadership based on directing and shaping excellent clinical practice. The last chapter presents pedagogical implications and uses of this work, both in schools of nursing and in practice settings.