Assessment of nurses' knowledge towards clinical reasoning skills in AL-Diwaniya Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Descriptive research was carried out from 1/7/2023 to 5/12/2023 to assess the level of clinical reasoning skills among the staff at Al-Diwaniya Teaching Hospital, and to ascertain the demographic characteristics of the participants. A sample of 50 nurses was recruited using potential sampling approaches. The participants in this study were clinical practitioners who gathered data using a specifically designed questionnaire. Data is gathered by employing questionnaire and interview procedures as tools for data gathering. Interviews were done with the nurses employed at Al-Diwaniya Teaching Hospital. Each interview had a duration of 5 to 10 minutes. The data collection process commenced on August 1st and concluded on October 6th. The data were evaluated using descriptive statistical analysis methodologies. The most important conclusions were that there is an acute shortage of nursing staff (nursing specialization), there is an acute shortage of training courses to develop clinical reasoning skills for nurses, and there are large proportions of nurses working in emergency, intensive care and resuscitation units, who are inexperienced groups. There is also an acute shortage of nurses' knowledge and the extent to which they apply clinical reasoning skills, as the repetition rate in the questionnaire paragraphs reached 63.6%. The most important recommendations are to provide the hospital with specialized nursing staff, strengthen the nursing staff, develop their clinical reasoning skills by increasing the quantity of instructional programs in the specific domain of clinical reasoning, and strengthen the intensive care units and emergency and recovery units with nursing staff with experience in the field of clinical work. The study recommended conducting more research in the field of developing clinical reasoning skills among nurses.