Critical thinking is an important component for nursing. As defined my the peer reviewed article,
critical thinking is implemented …”in the process of solving problems of patients and decision-making
process with creativity to enhance the effects” (Papathanasiou et al., 2014). This process is essential
when it comes to being a nursing. It is something most of us nursing students do not have developed
well when we begin nursing and might not even have it developed well once we graduate. A reason why
critical thinking is hard for some nursing students to build is because we have been programed to think
one dimension for example memorizing information given to us. We are not groomed through the
education system to look at problems in more than one light or to look at it deeper than the surface
meaning. This being said, the article titled, “ Critical Thinking: The Development of an Essential Skill for
Nursing Students” dives into what critical thinking is in nursing, the components of critical thinking, and
how it implement critical thinking into the nursing practice. The article was a great read; it gave some
helpful tips or practices to weave in for clinicals. For example, the Socratic method which was defined as
a technique which a person inspects below the surface, recognize and examine the condition, look at
the consequences, investigate the multiple data points and distinguish what he/she know as facts and
what they believe (Papathanasiou et al., 2014). This is a practice you could implement at the end of a
shift to get a better understanding of why the patient is there and be able to understand the treatment
plan. An important section of this paper is they factors which enhance critical thinking. It included
several traits but one which piqued my interest was impartiality or it could be better defined as thinking
based on facts or evidence. This is something which seems like it would be an integral part of critical
thinking, but it is seldom mentioned which discussing critical thinking in lecture classes. It does relate to
how nurses are advocated of the patients and family when playing a balancing act between family
members and the patient. Implementation is a topic this article goes over in depth. They talk about this
important idea which I did not think about. It is the idea that critical thinking is based on habits not
reflection. This means if a person implements high critical thinking on a regular basis, then it ought to
improve the person decision making in operation or during their shift.