Clinicians perceive AR to be a complex national problem but less relevant to their own institution or practice. Providing clinicians with information and steps for preventing AR, as in the Campaign, may affect their perceptions of the problem and motivate them to take actions to ensure patient safety.

Attrition from undergraduate nursing programs continues to warrant investigation particularly in the climate of nursing shortages and fiscal reflection on academic institutional programs. This three-year study used a prospective longitudinal survey design to determine entry characteristics of students, attrition, progression and completion in an undergraduate program. Students were surveyed in the first three weeks of commencing their program and gave permission for academic grades to be collected during their six session, three year Bachelor of Nursing program. Of the 740 students enrolled 48% (357 students) were surveyed and 352 students (99%) gave consent for their grades to be collected. One-third of the student cohort graduated in the expected three-year timeframe, one-third had dropped out and one-third was still completing their studies. A higher Grade Point Average and being a native English speaker were most predictive of students completing their course in the minimum expected timeframe.

Critical thinking, clinical reasoning, clinical decision making and clinical judgment, are used interchangeably in nursing literature. This presents a problem for nurses educating students to develop their clinical judgement. This paper reports on an integrative review undertaken to uncover whether it is feasible to continue using these concepts interchangeably. Data collection involved a search of relevant electronic databases for publications between 1980 and 2015 using such keywords as critical thinking, clinical reasoning, clinical decision making and clinical judgment. 23 papers met the inclusion criteria for the integrative review. Content analysis of the papers generated a total of 13 characteristics shared by the four concepts, which means that any one of the concepts can be used as a variable to measure changes in student nurses' thought processes.

Clinical judgement is an important component of safe and effective nursing care. Clinical judgement remains a challenging cognitive process to articulate and assess. An integrative review of the literature conducted in 2016 identified 13 characteristics of clinical judgement. This paper reports the results of a 2-phase survey to obtain consensus whether these characteristics identified accurately represented nurses' perception of clinical judgement. The 2-phase survey was administered via an online survey software tool. The survey in phase 1 sought Yes/No answers for nurse academics with recruitment via a hyperlink in an email to individuals identified from University websites, Google and published articles. In phase 2, the survey was modified to a Likert scale and recruitment occurred via online networks and was open to all nurses. The results identified that the characteristics accurately represented the nurse's perception of clinical judgement. By articulating the characteristics, it allows clinical judgement to be easily described and can therefore be applied to both nursing research and education.

Background: High Fidelity Simulation (HFS) is used as an environment for research and education into clinical judgement in nursing with positive results. Nursing actions are important aspects of clinical judgement. Observing nursing actions could provide an opportunity to identify the characteristics of clinical judgement. Therefore, the environment of HFS was chosen for this research as an observational tool.Aim: The aim of this paper is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using HFS as an environment for the research in aligning the nursing actions of undergraduate nurses to characteristics of clinical judgement.Methods: The study discussed in this paper was conducted in a simulation laboratory housing an HFS manikin within a large Australian university. The study used a descriptive research design with 18 undergraduate nurses agreeing to participate.Results: The major advantage of using HFS was that it provided a real time and safe platform to determine the nursing actions enacted which represented the characteristics of clinical judgement. The major disadvantage in our research was that only one person was available to conduct the research. It is also time consuming to both create an authentic scenario as well as preparation prior to conducting a simulation session.Conclusions: HFS provided an ideal environment to observe the actions of undergraduate student nurses and aligning these actions to the characteristics of clinical judgement. Implications: In using HFS for research the availability of participants needs to be negotiated. Individual rather than group assessment will provide clearer identification of needs of students to be developed.