SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
Measuring Nurses' Uncertainty in Clinical Decision-making: An Integrative Review
Mitra Mousavi Shabestari1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2023Volume: 17
E-location ID: e187443462307261
Publisher ID: e187443462307261
DOI: 10.2174/18744346-v17-230727-2023-36
Article History:
Received Date: 12/03/2023Revision Received Date: 01/06/2023
Acceptance Date: 06/06/2023
Electronic publication date: 29/08/2023
Collection year: 2023
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
There are complexities and controversies regarding the concept of uncertainty in clinical decision-making, making this concept difficult to use.
Objective:
This study aimed to review the definitions and instruments related to uncertainty in clinical decision-making to help researchers select better tools when examining uncertainty in nursing practice.
Methods:
To retrieve the related studies, we searched seven electronic databases, including IranMedex, Scientific Information Database (SID), MagIran, PubMed, Science Direct, Google Scholar, and ProQuest. The COSMIN Consensus-based Standards for the Selection of Health Measurement Instruments (consensus-based standards for the selection of health measurement instruments) was used to determine better tools, and the PRISMA checklist was followed.
Results:
In most of the reviewed studies, the main characteristics of uncertainty were ambiguity, lack of confidence and control, complexity, being on the horns of a dilemma, unpredictability, and unexpectedness. Concerning the measurement tools, despite their acceptable validity, they were mostly measuring uncertainty tolerance.
Conclusion:
According to the results of the reviewed studies, the available tools were not specifically dedicated to measuring the uncertainty of nurses in clinical decision-making. A suitable tool can be helpful in measuring nurses' awareness about their degree of uncertainty in decision-making and nursing managers' awareness about nurses' uncertainty, thereby helping in planning to reduce the complications caused by nurses' uncertainty in clinical decision-making. Hence, it is necessary to develop suitable tools.
