2021 Volume 20 Pages 29-39
This study aims to identify the characteristics of the ideas that mid-career nurses use to make clinical judgments based on visual information, by comparing two nurse groups distinguished by levels of competence. After measuring the visual information of mid-career nurses obtained during patient observations, the nurses were shown data of gazes recorded during the observation to elucidate how they make clinical judgments. They were also asked to respond to questions of “What they looked at and what they were thinking about”. The data of gazes and verbal utterance were divided into two groups：one from six mid-career nurses with higher nursing competence and one from twenty-seven general mid-career nurses, for a comparative analysis. The gaze analysis showed no significant differences in the numbers of gazes and gazing times of the two groups. However, for the numbers of utterance units of the observation items, the higher nursing competence group had larger numbers of utterance units than those of the general mid-career nurse group：in the higher nursing competence group, 9.5 times for the “facial part”, 6.5 times for <inference type> utterance units related to ideas in making clinical judgements, and 3.0 times for <analytical care decision type> utterance units；in the general nursing competence group, these numbers were 7.0, 2.0, and 1.0 times. The findings show that the mid-career nurses with higher nursing competence think more efficiently about the situation in more detail even when visual information is limited, and that they utilize reasoning and make analytical judgements based on an awareness of the observations.
