Objectives: to understand the perceptions of senior students in an undergraduate nursing course at a nursing college in Lisbon regarding skills related to clinical decision-making learned during their initial training. Methods: qualitative study, of an exploratory and descriptive nature. Data collection occurred by carrying out a focus group with eight senior students in an undergraduate nursing course. Data treatment applied content analysis, performed with twebQDA® software. Results: data were analyzed according to the four dimensions of Tanner’s model of clinical judgment, and noticing and interpreting stood out as the most influential in clinical decision-making. Theoretical and clinical knowledge, validation of care planning, prioritization, and capacity to discuss and debate about situations emerged as the most representative skills. Final considerations: students make decisions by means of a complex process by using the knowledge and skills learned during their training.
Introduction: Learning clinical judgment in initial nursing training is essential for nursing practice. Clinical judgment integrates previous clinical experiences, knowledge and skills development from multiple learning modalities. As a clinical context with varied situations, clinical teaching provides opportunities for the development of clinical judgment that is indispensable for decision-making in the care process. The pandemic lead to changes in nursing education, among them, the limitation of students' access to clinical teaching places. Likely causing some interference in the learning of clinical judgment. Goals: To describe the importance of learning clinical judgment in clinical teaching and to identify the factors that interfere with this learning, during a pandemic. Methods: A qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive study, whose data collection strategy was an online focus group with 6 students in the last clinical teaching of the Degree in Nursing. Data analysis was performed by content analysis according to Bardin using webQDA® software. Results: The “Essence for Action” category, with 15 registration units, emerged as the most valued in the “Contributions of Clinical Judgment Learning to Clinical Teaching” dimension. The category “Learning Environments”, with 23 recording units, was the most valued in the “Factors that Interfere with Clinical Judgment Learning” dimension. Conclusions: Clinical judgment is considered by nursing student as fundamental for individualized nursing intervention. It appears that the context in which the student's clinical experience took place had a great impact on the learning of clinical judgment, with the pandemic being considered a challenging factor in the context of learning.
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