Exploration of structure of clinical judgment of nurses: A grounded theory study

Clinical judgement as a tool for professionals allows the nurses to play their roles and explore their opinion. This necessitates clarification of the structure of clinical judgment. It is difficult to give a unanimous definition for clinical judgement; therefore، exploration of the structure of the concept is necessary to understanding clinical judgment. The aim of this study is to explore the structure of clinical judgment of nurses.

This qualitative research was a grounded theory study based on purposed sampling. 18 clinical nurses from Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences were interviewed. The interviews were transcribed in Microsoft Word Office، and then the data were analyzed in MAXQDA2007. Constant comparison analyses were used simultaneously with data collection.

The participants in study include 9 men and 9 women، with at least 3 years of experience of nursing in variable clinical settings. Final research findings could be discussed in five categories including: complexity of definition of clinical judgment، context of clinical judgment، continuum of clinical judgment، skills of nurse in clinical judgment، and achieve to professional criteria.

Despite the complexity of the concept in the literatures and the field of research، this study could explore the structure of clinical judgment of nurses in the clinical arena. The results of this study would be used to explore nurses'' clinical judgment model، based on grounded theory.