ESSENTIAL CONCEPTS, CLINICAL SKILLS,
EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE,AND EXAM
PREPARATION FOR NURSING STUDENTS
[Document subtitle]
, Comprehensive Guide to Nursing 205: Essential
Concepts, Clinical Skills, Evidence-Based Practice,
and Exam Preparation for Nursing Students
1.A nurse is assessing a patient who is diagnosed with anorexia. Following the assessment,
the nurse recommends that the patient meet with a nutritionist. This action best
exemplifies the use of:
A. Clinical judgment
B. Clinical reasoning
C. Critical thinking
D. Blended competencies - -CORRECT ANS- -a.
Although all the options refer to the skills used by nurses in practice, the best choice is
clinical judgment as it refers to the result or outcome of critical thinking or clinical
reasoning—in this case, the recommendation to meet with a nutritionist. Clinical reasoning
usually refers to ways of thinking about patient care issues (determining, preventing, and
managing patient problems). Critical thinking is a broad term that includes reasoning both
outside and inside of the clinical setting. Blended competencies are the cognitive,
technical, interpersonal, and ethical and legal skills combined with the willingness to use
them creatively and critically when working with patients.
2.A nurse working in a long-term care facility bases patient care on five caring processes:
knowing, being with, doing for, enabling, and maintaining belief. This approach to patient
care best describes whose theory?
A. Travelbee's
B. Watson's
C. Benner's
D. Swanson's - -CORRECT ANS- -d.
1
, Swanson
(1991) identifies five caring processes and defines caring as "a nurturing way of relating
to a valued other toward whom one feels a personal sense of commitment and
responsibility." Travelbee (1971), an early nurse theorist, developed the Human-to-Human
Relationship Model, and defined nursing as an interpersonal process whereby the
professional nurse practitioner assists an individual, family, or community to prevent or
cope with the experience of illness and suffering, and if necessary to find meaning in these
experiences. Benner and Wrubel (1989) wrote that caring is a basic way of being in the
world, and that caring is central to human expertise, curing, and healing. Watson's theory is
based on the belief that all humans are to be valued, cared for, respected, nurtured,
understood, and assisted.
3.The nurse practices using critical thinking indicators (CTIs) when caring for patients in the
hospital setting. The best description of CTIs is:
A. Evidence-based descriptions of behaviors that demonstrate the knowledge that
promotes critical thinking in clinical practice
B. Evidence-based descriptions of behaviors that demonstrate the knowledge and skills
that promote critical thinking in clinical practice
C. Evidence-based descriptions of behaviors that demonstrate the knowledge,
characteristics, and skills that promote critical thinking in clinical practice
D. Evidence-based descriptions of behaviors that demonstrate the knowledge,
characteristics, standards, and skills that promote critical thinking in clinical practice - -
CORRECT ANS- -c.
Evidence-based descriptions of behaviors that demonstrate the knowledge,
characteristics, and skills that promote critical thinking in clinical practice.
4.Read the following scenario and identify the adjective used to describe the
characteristics of patient data that are numbered below. Place your answers on the lines
provided.
The nurse is conducting an initial assessment of a 79-year-old female patient admitted to
the hospital with a diagnosis of dehydration. The nurse (1) uses clinical reasoning to
identify the need to perform a comprehensive assessment and gather the appropriate
patient data. (2) First the nurse asks the patient about the most important details leading
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