A gut feeling? Intuition and critical care nursing.

As nurses, we are knowledgeable about nursing and able, immediately and intuitively, to identify the needs and demands of a given situation. Experienced nurses practise intuitively by virtue of having developed, through critical thought, a deeply grounded knowledge base that can be applied in daily practice. Each gains knowledge about nursing practice in such a way that every clinical experience becomes a lesson which informs the next experience. There is continued debate over the domain of nursing knowledge, where it originates and to whom it belongs. Much of nursing knowledge has emerged from the practice of other professions. There now appears to be an increasing focus within today's modern healthcare environment on the importance of measurable outcomes and the need to predict the consequences of all interventions. The strength of our intuition often urges us to do something more for the patient. When we as nurses report our intuitions, subjective feelings are often at odds with the objective signs and symptoms. Nurses have made great strides in recognizing, analysing and teaching concepts related to logical, rational decision-making. It is imperative, however, also to recognize and teach the concepts related to the intuitive and precognitive components of making decisions in clinical practice.