What behavioral components, such as interpreting evidence, exploring ideas, asking relevant questions, recognizing issues, and recognizing assumptions, does a nurse (registered nurse) likely use during the assessment phase of the nursing process (nursing assessment) to demonstrate critical thinking in client (patient) care?

From the Research

During the assessment phase of the nursing process, a nurse demonstrates critical thinking by primarily asking relevant questions and recognizing issues. When a nurse first encounters a client, they must gather comprehensive data through targeted questioning to identify the client's health status, concerns, and needs. This involves formulating purposeful questions that elicit essential information about symptoms, medical history, and current conditions. Simultaneously, the nurse must recognize issues by identifying patterns in the client's responses and physical assessment findings that may indicate potential health problems. While interpreting evidence, exploring ideas, and recognizing assumptions are also components of critical thinking in nursing, they become more prominent in later phases of the nursing process such as diagnosis and planning. In the assessment phase specifically, the nurse's ability to ask relevant questions and recognize issues forms the foundation for effective data collection that will guide subsequent care decisions, as highlighted in a study on the role of questioning skills in patient assessment 1.

The importance of assessing the patient's needs and planning effective care is also emphasized in more recent studies, such as one published in 2021, which discusses the significance of person-centred care in assessing needs and highlights the need for all nursing interventions to be evidence-based 2. However, the most relevant study to the question at hand is the one from 1995, which provides a critical analysis of the literature on patient assessment and nurses' questioning skills 1.

Some studies, such as those on maternal metabolomics 3, sepsis 4, and citrus limonin 5, may not be directly related to the nursing process and critical thinking in the assessment phase, and therefore, are not considered in this context.

Key components of critical thinking in the assessment phase include:

• Asking relevant questions to gather comprehensive data
• Recognizing issues by identifying patterns in the client's responses and physical assessment findings
• Formulating purposeful questions to elicit essential information about symptoms, medical history, and current conditions
• Identifying potential health problems through targeted questioning and physical assessment.