The Importance Of Decision Making In Geriatric Nursing

Decision-making is the process requiring critical thinking and forecasting ability to assist a person in selecting a logical choice from the available number of options. (Tiffen, Corbridge & Slimmer, 2014). Studies show that nurses make a health care decision every 30 seconds so it becomes an involuntary process for nurses to make clinical decisions. From admission itself, the plan regarding the patient’s bed occupancy, care and treatment will be decided. In geriatric nursing along with many other clinical care decisions nurse need to make decisions on long term care plan like selection of end of life care (EOL) and discharge planning.

The key area of decision-making on direct patient care is intervention effectiveness, picking an intervention

In EOL decisions for aged, nurses who have previously developed a trusting relationship with the family gain a unique perspective that allows them to become aware of a clinical deterioration and this places nurses in a position to facilitate EOL decision-making (Adams, Bailey & Anderson,2011). Thou the individual competence, employer policies standards and conditions may vary the registered nurse’s scope of practice allows her to commence an EOL decision when a plan is already in place but restricts her to make a decision for the patient in the first place, she give the information and directions so that family or patient itself reaches the right decision (Leditshke, Crispin & Bestic, 2015; Tiffen, Corbridge & Slimmer,

Taking an example of EOL decision again, death and dying of self or immediate family is the most difficult subject to talk about. She arranges a meeting with next of kin and other health professional depending on the situation and explains the whole situation, the pros and cons of each decision in an unbiased manner (Burgess, Braunack-Mayer, Crawford & Beilby, 2014). With the previous experience and the training received on end of life care, geriatric nurse gets a well-written treatment plan by the treating physician. She communicates the decision among the multi-disciplinary team (Stewart, Goddard & Schiff, 2011) and documents all discussions and decisions for shift handover and as a legal record for later (Chan &