Elsevier

Nursing Outlook

Volume 46, Issue 1, January–February 1998, Pages 29-36
Nursing Outlook

OPT: Transformation of nursing process for contemporary practice

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0029-6554(98)90022-7Get rights and content

Abstract

Over time, clinical, educational, and social forces have influenced the development of three generations of traditional nursing process. The first generation was concerned with problems and process. Analysis of second-generation models revealed interest in understanding the nature of diagnosis and diagnostic reasoning. We have proposed a third generation model that underscores the importance of critical, metacognitive, and thinking skills that support outcome specification and testing in clinical reasoning. Clinicians, educators, managers, and administrators are invited to consider the OPT model as an alternative to traditional nursing process. The OPT model may be one of many transitional reasoning models35,36 needed for contemporary nursing practice.

References (36)

  • Standards of nursing practice

    (1973)
  • K Gebbie et al.

    Classification of nursing diagnoses

    (1975)
  • D Carnevali et al.

    Diagnostic reasoning in nursing

    (1984)
  • M Gordon

    Nursing diagnosis process and application

    (1982)
  • P Benner

    From novice to expert

    (1988)
  • P Benner et al.

    Expertise in nursing practice

    (1997)
  • M McHugh

    Nursing process: musings on the method

    Holistic Nurs Pract

    (1986)
  • DJ Pesut

    Aim vs blame: using an outcome specification model

    J Psychosoc Nurs Ment Health Serv

    (1989)
  • Cited by (33)

    • An Update on Clinical Judgment in Nursing and Implications for Education, Practice, and Regulation

      2021, Journal of Nursing Regulation
      Citation Excerpt :

      It began as a model to identify a problem and provide a solution but advanced to encompass reasoning about potential nursing diagnoses and actions to manage, resolve, or prevent problems. As the focus of healthcare shifted from problems to outcomes, the problem-focused nursing process came into question as a model of thinking and decision-making for complex contemporary nursing practice (Pesut & Herman, 1998). Tanner’s (2006) comprehensive synthesis of clinical judgment in nursing disrupted the firm reliance on the nursing process as a model for decision-making and provided a framework for understanding how nurses use knowledge, experience, and multiple reasoning patterns to make decisions about care.

    • Psychometric properties of the virtual patient version of the Lasater Clinical Judgment Rubric

      2019, Nurse Education in Practice
      Citation Excerpt :

      The OPT model builds on the heritage of the traditional nursing process and at the same time differs from it in several important ways. The OPT model provides a structure for iterative clinical reasoning by focusing on organising patients' needs and nursing care activities around keystone issues and outcome specifications (Kautz et al., 2005; Kuiper et al., 2017; Pesut and Herman, 1999, 1998). The first factor, “Understanding the patient”, consists of items from the noticing phase and the interpreting phase, along with one item from the responding phase, items relating to knowing the patient.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    1

    DANIEL J. PESUT is a professor and Chair of the Department of Environments for Health at Indiana University School of Nursing, Indianapolis.

    2

    JOANNE HERMAN is an associate professor at the University of South Carolina College of Nursing, Columbia.

    View full text