Journal of Clinical Nursing

Aims and objectives. To gain an understanding of how children's nurses make clinical decisions.

Background. Several studies have explored how nurses make clinical decisions and the factors that may affect the decision-making strategies used. However, the results of these studies are contradictory. Further, little is known about children's nurses’ decision-making strategies.

Design. The think aloud technique.

Methods. Nurses (n = 12) from three surgical wards and nurses (n = 15) from three medical wards in a Scottish children's hospital were presented with clinical scenarios and asked to think aloud. The verbal protocols were analysed to provide an indication of how children's nurses made decisions. Whether there were any differences in decision-making between experienced and less experienced nurses and between graduates and non-graduates was also explored.

Results. Analysis of verbal protocols obtained using the think aloud technique suggested that all the nurses in the sample used a hypothetico-deductive (analytical) model of decision-making. Further, all participants appeared to use backward reasoning strategies regardless of their level of expertise. This is a characteristic of non-expert decision-making. Experienced and less experienced nurses collected similar additional information before planning nursing interventions, supporting the conjecture that they were functioning at a non-expert level in relation to decision-making. No differences were seen in the information collected by graduate and non-graduate nurses.

Conclusions. The decision-making strategies of children's nurses need exploring further and further research is needed to identify factors that may affect decision-making strategies. Several strategies to support nurses’ clinical decision-making have been proposed but need testing to ascertain their effectiveness.

Relevance to clinical practice. In clinical practice nurses make numerous decisions throughout the course of a shift. Sub-optimal decision-making strategies may adversely affect the quality of nursing care provided. It is imperative, therefore, to ascertain how nurses make clinical decisions and the factors that may influence the decision-making strategies used.