Judgment under conditions of uncertainty.

Judgment is an important aspect of nursing practice. This author provides an historical overview of judgment theory, research evidence of the heuristics and biases used by decision makers in their judgments, and a discussion of the fallibility of inferred knowledge--with an emphasis on overconfidence as a primary bias in judgment. The content includes also suggestions for improving judgments, and the implications of normative and non-normative judgment models for nursing.