Co-directors
Nursing Decision Making
Professor P Anne Scott
Dublin City University (DCU)
E-mail: [email protected]
Professor Pearl Treacy
University College Dublin NUI (UCD)
E-mail: [email protected]
Dublin City University
University College Dublin
Research Team
Dr P Mac Neela, DCU
Dr A Hyde, UCD
Dr M Butler, UCD
Contact - DCU
Sue Mc Govern, MSc, BSc, RGN
E-mail: [email protected]
(Research Assistant)
Contact - UCD
Elizabeth Laffan, MSN
E-mail: [email protected]
(Research Assistant)
An Integrated Programme of Research
to Maximise the Effectiveness of Clinical
Nursing Resources
A Health Research Board
Research Programme, 2002-2007
The Health Research Board has awarded a research team at
the School of Nursing, DCU, and the School of Nursing and
Midwifery Studies, UCD, the first Research Programme in
Nursing in Ireland, in Nursing Decision-Making.
The purpose of the programme is to examine the decisionmaking that underpins the nursing contribution to health
and social care at individual, interpersonal and
organisational levels.
The research will focus on two areas:
Clinical judgement and decision-making in nursing is
related to key components of effective nursing care,
including:
Nursing Minimum Data Set (NMDS)
A data set tool will be developed to systematically analyse
nursing phenomena, activities, and outcomes, including user
satisfaction with care. The NMDS tool will be used in
community/institutional and general nursing/mental health
nursing settings, and will be developed using methods such
as organisational studies of decision making and focus
groups.
Clinical judgement and decision making
Nursing decision-making will be analysed from a cognitive
perspective, giving an insight into the sources of information
that nurses draw on in forming judgements and inferences,
and the structures/processes that guide information use in
decision-making.
The phenomena nurses use to understand their
patients/clients, such as nursing diagnoses;
Health maintenance activities and deliberative
therapeutic interventions that nurses carry out;
Outcomes associated with nursing care, such as nursingsensitive patient outcomes.
Between 2002-2007, the research team will examine the
basis to nursing decision-making and develop clinical
applications to support an evidence-based approach to
clinical nursing practice.