Concept analysis of cognitive artifacts.

Cognitive artifacts--information displays that inform thought processes and increase knowledge--fulfill a fundamental role in distributed cognition. Cognitive work--the mental processes of selecting and evaluating data, reasoning, and making decisions--is guided and informed by cognitive artifacts, especially in clinical areas. The importance of cognitive artifacts to cognitive work suggests the need to study and comprehensively understand cognitive artifacts prepared and used by the clinical nurses and how these documents influence and guide nursing practice. This article identifies and describes the attributes of effectively constructed cognitive artifacts using the concept analysis process described by Walker and Avant.