Consider your early clinical nursing experiences: what influenced your choices? Did you follow the †bookâ€TM when it came to nursing? Consider how you make decisions right now. How have your clinical experiences helped you have a deeper understanding and critical thinking skills?

Based on clinical experience, this week’s Learning Resources look at skill development and degrees of information acquisition. Benner, for example, claims that as a nurse’s experience grows, so does her knowledge and skill level. Nurses progress from novices who make decisions based on rules to specialists who use critical thinking to find links between actions and results. The role of critical thinking in nursing practice, as well as the relationship between critical thinking, clinical competence, and scholarship, are discussed in this discussion.