Module 5-Decision Support: heuristics

The readings for this section (especially those by Thompson) rang true with me. I have found that the more time that I have been a nurse, the more I naturally depend on past experiences to make clinical decisions. I remember being a new RN on my orthopedic med-surg floor, stuggling with every decision I made because everything was so new to me. I was overwhelmed with all of the new information about procedures and policies. Now that I have been in this role for a couple of years, a lot of what I do and a lot of what I tell patients comes from mental shortcuts that I have made. It is almost as though I go on autopilot sometimes. Reading these articles, I understand why this way of doing things maks me vulnrable to biases. For example, if a patient's condition reminds me of another patient I once had, I may fall into the trap of thinking that the two patients have the same needs. I may also feel that I know the patient's condition better than I actually do (overconfidence). Two total hip patients may actually have medical issues that make thm very different. Relying too much on mental shortcuts (heuristics) can be dangerous.
However, I am also sure that experience makes us better nurses. If we are aware of the biases that we bring to the patient rooms, we may be able to keep ourselves from falling into them. While the natural way for humans to use information is to create shortcuts, we can make the extra effort to use evidence-based practice. If we continually try to learn about new and better ways of doing a procedure, for example, we can prevent overconfidence. We will realize that medicine is always changing and we will poise ourselves to change with it.