Time to extend the 'process'?

Abstract

During the past two decades, nurses and nursing students have been encouraged to organize care planning via the 'nursing process'. Although it is helpful to adopt a systematic approach to planning nursing care, it may be time to evaluate our use of the process; to consider whether strict adherence to it has shifted nursing's perspective from holism to an unduly mechanistic approach to care giving. Several research studies support the notion that intuitive processes are an important aspect of clinical judgement. In order to educate future generations of nurses for expertise in practice rather than mediocrity, these processes must be acknowledged and taken account of in curriculum planning; the nursing process should be recognized as merely a fraction of the equation for practice.