Nurses’ judgements and decisions ha

Nurses’ judgements and decisions have the potential to help healthcare systems allocate
resources efficiently, promote health gain and patient benefit and prevent harm. Evidence
from healthcare systems throughout the world suggests that judgements and decisions
made by clinicians could be improved: around half of all adverse events have some kind of
error at their core. For nursing to contribute to raising quality though improved
judgements and decisions within health systems we need to know more about the
decisions and judgements themselves, the interventions likely to improve judgement and
decision processes and outcomes, and where best to target finite intellectual and
educational resources. There is a rich heritage of research into decision making and
judgement, both from within the discipline of nursing and from other perspectives, but
which focus on nurses. Much of this evidence plays only a minor role in the development of
educational and technological efforts at decision improvement. This paper presents nine
unanswered questions that researchers and educators might like to consider as a potential
agenda for the future of research into this important area of nursing practice, training and
development