Addressing the Challenge of Developing a Conceptual Definition for Clinical Judgment

Critical thinking, clinical reasoning, clinical decision making and clinical judgment, are used interchangeably in nursing literature. This presents a problem for nurses educating students to develop their clinical judgement. This paper reports on an integrative review undertaken to uncover whether it is feasible to continue using these concepts interchangeably. Data collection involved a search of relevant electronic databases for publications between 1980 and 2015 using such keywords as critical thinking, clinical reasoning, clinical decision making and clinical judgment. 23 papers met the inclusion criteria for the integrative review. Content analysis of the papers generated a total of 13 characteristics shared by the four concepts, which means that any one of the concepts can be used as a variable to measure changes in student nurses' thought processes.