Assessment of clinical decision-making ability of critical care nurses.

What are nurse administrators to do when their institution is in need of competent nurses to staff the ICU and the majority of applicants are either inexperienced or new graduates? Nurses from one institution grappled with this question. They decided that it was their job to teach novice nurses to make sound clinical judgments in life-threatening situations. As part of this process, they developed a Clinical Decision-Making Assessment (CDMA) tool. This article describes the CDMA and provides suggestions for classroom and clinical teaching.