Recognising logical fallacies in nursing practice to support effective clinical decision-making.

Logical fallacies can affect routine and complex decision-making, potentially leading to a reduction in the efficacy or application of robust evidence to care. Experienced and inexperienced nurses may inadvertently integrate fallacious reasoning into their clinical decisions due to the inherent deceptiveness of logical fallacies and the effect of cognitive biases. By gaining an understanding of logical fallacies, nurses may be able to identify them during clinical reasoning processes, thereby mitigating their effects on clinical outcomes. This article considers six of the most common logical fallacies and provides examples of how they might manifest in clinical practice.