ABSTRACT
Nurses’ decision making has at its heart the creation and development of a narrative, which is an account of how the patient is known. The narrative originated through processing referral information into a pre-admission account or impression of the patient. This chapter describes a model of nurses’ clinical decision making. The model represents how nurses construct knowledge of their patients. The chapter also describes how a fleeting account about a patient is developed into a narrative that is shared by a team of nurses and individually owned by each one of them. Narrative development commences with a pre-admission account about a patient that is developed into an admission account following the patient’s arrival on the ward. Decisions were made about the physical preparations needed to nurse the patient, and also about what to ask about during the patient assessment interview.
