What Is Clinical Reasoning Cycle? Improving Your Decision Making

Are you a medical student or a nursing student? Then, you must be aware of the term ‘clinical reasoning cycle’. If you are new to the study, you may not have a clear idea about it. But, with time, you will get used to this term. Simply put, clinical reasoning is a mental cycle medicine practitioners use to treat the patient’s condition and provide a proper treatment plan. If you are not that much accustomed to the term now, you must pay attention to this blog. Here, you can find all the answers to your questions regarding the clinical reasoning cycle.

What Is Clinical Reasoning Cycle?

The clinical reasoning cycle is a structured approach of treatment that medicine practitioners use to diagnose a patient and come to a solution about treating their diseases. Here, the doctor or nurse must pay attention to the patient's clinical knowledge and consider the local culture and medical ethics while following a particular medical procedure. As per Levett Jones Clinical Reasoning Cycle, the process has 8 steps, like-

• First, the doctor or nurse must understand the patient’s condition. Here, they must pay attention to the patient’s background, health condition, and present concerns.

• Then, they collect information about the patient’s medical condition, background, test results, and other observations.

• After that, the medical practitioner must analyze the collected data to identify the patterns and relationships.

• Then, they can understand the patient's major health issues and establish proper healthcare goals based on the patient’s condition.

• Now, the practitioner can take valuable steps to treat the patient. Also, they can assess the effectiveness of the treatment.

• Finally, they must review their plan to make any changes for the future.

So, here you get a brief overview of clinical reasoning cycle. Healthcare professionals refine their approach continuously to keep the treatment cycle active and be better. To understand more about clinical reasoning cycle, you must understand the importance of it too.

Complete Your Task Quickly

Importance of Clinical Reasoning Cycle

Knowing the importance of the clinical reasoning cycle will help you to understand a lot about the treatment procedure. The theory was developed by Levett-Jones in 2010, and since then, it has been an effective method of treatment. It helps nurses to understand the patient’s condition and offer treatment accordingly. Therefore, nursing students can develop their critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. Also, they learn to make decisions when necessary. Besides, the clinical reasoning cycle is also effective in reducing any mistakes in the diagnosis and treatment procedure. As this method enhances the communication between the patient and the caregivers, they can understand how to take care of the patients.  

You can understand the Levett-Jones clinical reasoning cycle better once you check the case studies, as that helps you to understand its real-world application. For example, if a nursing student handles a patient with pulmonary diseases, the cycle will help her gather enough data about the patient’s condition. Then, she must identify the key factors of the patient’s condition and provide a suitable treatment plan. Thus, the nursing student can reach the conclusion of how the treatment procedure worked for that patient. You can use the guidance from experts of Global Assignment Help Australia to understand the importance of clinical reasoning better. In the next segment, you must understand the 8 phases well.

8 Phases of Clinical Reasoning Cycle

So, you get an idea about it from clinical reasoning cycle example case study. To understand it better, you must learn the 8 phases of this cycle. Every health sector requires proper plans and procedures to treat patients. Therefore, to give patients the best treatment, the medicine practitioners use several clinical reasoning cycle nursing example for students to know it well. Knowing the 8 phases is, therefore, important. Read on to know more-

Consider the Patient’s Current Health Situation

This is the first phase of clinical reasoning cycle. Here, the medical practitioners must understand the health status of the patient. Then, you must study the medical records and personal situation of the patient. Here, you must gather age, gender, symptoms, lifestyle, and any past treatment records. After gathering all this information, you can understand the present condition of a patient and can provide further guidance on the treatment.

Collect Information About the Patient

In this phase, the healthcare provider collects essential information from different sources like medical journals, laboratory reports, diagnostic tests, patient interviews, and physical examinations. This step makes sure that the medical practitioner has all the necessary information to help the patient improve his health condition. Nurses and doctors must check out the non-verbal cues of patients, like breathing issues, pain, etc., to plan the treatment procedure.

Curious to Know About Our Writing Excellence ?

Go Ahead and Check Out Our Customer Reviews

Check Review Order Now

Process the Information

After you have collected the information, it time to process that information to bring out the pattern and any inconsistencies. In this step, you must analyze the test results and compare the new data with the old ones. Also, you must check the symptoms for any progression of the disease. This step is important as you get deeper understanding about the patient’s condition and also the reasons of symptoms.

Identify the Issues

Once the healthcare professionals analyze the information, they plan the diagnosis. From the key findings, they understand what the possible causes of the patient’s symptoms are. For example, if a patient visits a doctor with chest pain, breathing difficulty, high blood pressure, etc. then the doctor can suspect the patient may have cardiac issues. So, he can ask the patient for further tests. This phase is quite important as it helps to build the treatment plan further.

Set Goals/Objectives

Once you identify the issues, you can set the goals for treating the patient. You must set short-term and long-term goals according to the patient’s comfort. Make sure you prepare realistic and measurable goals for your patients. Make sure the short-term goals can heal the sudden surge of the disease while the long-term goals must be based on treating the disease through different changes in the patient’s lifestyle.

Take Suitable Actions

In this stage, the healthcare professional implement the treatments and interventions as per the patient’s requirement. They can provide medications, any surgeries or other medical procedures, letting patient know about his condition, and referring to other specialists if necessary.

Evaluate Outcomes

Once the medical practitioners have performed the treatment procedure, they must check the results of it. Here, they should check the test results, the vital signs, and patient’s present condition after the procedures. If the intervention didn’t go well, they may need to bring changes in the treatment procedures to get quick results.

Reflection on Plan and New Learning

This is quite a critical phase of clinical reasoning cycle. Here, the healthcare professionals should review their interventions, decision-making process, and results to find out the areas for improvement. Also, this stage helps the practitioners learn self-development, analyzing the condition, developing skills, and avoiding the similar errors in further cases.

So, these are the 8 phases of the clinical reasoning cycle. Knowing these will help you to proceed step-by-step. Also, you can write assignments on the topic with relevant examples. Along with these, you must know about the rights of clinical reasoning. Let’s focus on that area in the next segment.

What Are the Five Rights of Clinical Reasoning?

The five rights of the clinical reasoning cycle are the proper guidelines for healthcare professionals that help them to take proper action plans for every patient. Moreover, you can also use our paraphrasing tool for an effortless experience. Here are the five rights of clinical reasoning. Have a look-

Right Cues

It means getting the right clinical information of the patient. So, you must collect all essential patient data including their previous treatment, symptoms, and other observations. If you ever miss any important cue at this stage, the treatment procedure can fail.

Right Patient

Each patient is different. So, the healthcare professionals must pay attention to the individual patients. Therefore, you should gather the information regarding their medical history, requirements, and conditions based on their lifestyle, age, gender. For example, you must understand that the treatment procedure of a diabetic patient of a 60 years and a 35 years will be different.

Right Time

Treatment on time is crucial in the healthcare system. The healthcare provider must find out the disease and start treating it early to get positive outcomes. For example, if a person gets a stroke, you must treat him within the ‘golden hour’. Thus, you can reduce the risk of brain damage.

Right Action

Like the right timing, taking action at the right time is important. So, healthcare professionals must ensure their actions are based on proper evidence. Any kind of wrong treatment can lead to wrong results, which can be dangerous for the patient.

Right Reason

Every decision a healthcare provider makes must be based on proper reasons. They must know why a particular treatment procedure is proper for a patient. Therefore, you must understand the patient’s requirements and condition.

So, here you get information about the five rights of the clinical reasoning cycle. Understanding these helps healthcare professionals make the right decision at the right time for their patients. As a nursing student, you must know about the clinical reasoning cycle as you may need to write assignments on it. If you find it confusing, you can ask for professional help.

Want Academic Excellence? We Are Here to Help!

If you find writing assignments on the clinical reasoning cycle challenging, you can ask for professional help. And when you think of the best nursing assignment help, we are here to help you. We have a team of experts to guide you in writing such assignments. Also, we have been in this field for a long time. So, we have enough experience of providing assistance to students who have issues with their academic tasks. Call us and we are happy to help!

You May Also Like To Read :

Achieve Academic Excellence With Descriptive Writing

Writing an Engaging Essay Introduction: Tips and Techniques