Relational Inquiry's Impact: Analyzing Cues in Clinical Reasoning

This essay delves into the significance of relational inquiry within nursing practice, emphasizing its role in understanding and addressing patients' complex needs, particularly within challenging contexts. The core focus is on how relational inquiry impacts the clinical reasoning process, specifically in recognizing and analyzing cues to action. The essay uses a scenario of a charge nurse managing a patient's cultural needs before surgery to illustrate the practical application of relational inquiry. The charge nurse demonstrates professional nursing qualities by collaborating with other nurses and the surgical team to find a solution that respects the patient's cultural beliefs while adhering to surgical protocols. The essay highlights the importance of addressing patients' physical, emotional, and social needs for holistic care and better health outcomes. Furthermore, it emphasizes the role of clinical reasoning in devising appropriate interventions and the value of teamwork and communication in achieving patient-centered care. The essay concludes by underscoring the necessity of integrating relational inquiry and clinical reasoning to provide high-quality, patient-focused care, especially when dealing with complex patient needs.

Relational Inquiry
Name:
Institution
Date:

Relational inquiry in nursing practice is used when a nurse has to understand patients’
needs in a complicated context and attend to them. Clinical reasoning is a process where nurses
understand a patients’ problem by gathering cues from the patient, processing the information,
plan an intervention, evaluate outcomes, reflect, and learn from the process. This essay will be
discussing the impact of relational inquiry when recognizing and analyzing cues to action in the
process of clinical reasoning.
The scenario given describes how the charge nurse handles a complicated situation of
patients going for a surgical operation. Pre-operational standards require that a patient is fully
prepared before going for the surgical, and they have given consent to the surgical procedure.
Foreign objects are not allowed in the operating room as it increases chances for infections to the
patient (Van Klei et al. 2012). The relational inquiry is about understanding the patients' needs
and attending to them, and in this scenario, the charge nurse attends to the cultural needs of the
patient before he goes for surgery. The charge nurse shows professional nursing practice
qualities when she collaborates with other nurses to address the cultural needs of the patient.
Culture is a way of life of a group of people and looks into how these people who are considered
a community does their things as manifested by their behavior, values, and beliefs. Relational
inquiry requires that the physical, emotional, and social needs of a patient are well addressed in
the complicated context for the well-being of the patient. The charge nurse collaborates with

other nurses to find a solution that will address the dilemma they face on how to allow the
patients religious object into the operating room. Clinical reasoning is practiced here because the
charge nurse looks for an intervention plan that will address the cultural issue that he needs to be
addressed before he can consent for the surgery (Ballantine & Roberts, 2012).
The nurse displays leadership skill of communication when she collaborates with other
nurses to come up with a solution to solve the cultural issue they are facing. Collaborating with
other nurses and the surgeon for approval brings out a multidisciplinary approach. The charge
nurse brings the whole operating team together, and they try and find a solution on how the
patients’ religious object can be brought in to the operating room (Pfaff et al. 2014). The
operating team has to evaluate the outcome of their decision because this object could bring post-
operation complications to the patient. Surgical operations are required to be sterile as they can
be and bringing foreign objects to the operating room compromises that. I believe the action was
appropriate because for the nurses to provide quality care to patients, they have to manage their
patients in a holistic manner. The physical, emotional, and cultural needs of the patient have to
be met for the patient to appreciate the nursing care they receive. Research has shown that
patients whos physical, emotional, and social needs are not addressed tend to have a poor health
outcome compared to patients whose needs are addressed. I believe that taking care of patients is
the nursing practice, and therefore, all the needs of a patient should be taken care of by the
charge nurse (Hartgerink et al. 2014).
Nurses with clinical reasoning skills are able to recognize patients’ needs and attend to
them adequately and effectively. These nurses offer holistic care to patients which is the basis
upon which the nursing profession was founded (Marcum, 2012). Recognizing cues from
patients requires that nurses establish a therapeutic relationship with the patients first. A good

therapeutic relationship enables patients to be open and talk to nurses about their needs. The
patient feels that bringing the religious object to the operating room will take care of his culture
belief which is a social need. The charge nurse recognizes this cue from the patient and tries to
find a solution to it within the rules of surgery. A sterile dressing used to apply the religious
object to the patient ensures that they reduce the chances of microbial organisms infecting the
patient after the operation. Through utilizing the step of analyzing in clinical reasoning, they are
able to come up with an informed decision. Analyzing a complex problem helps nurses critically
evaluate the advantages and disadvantages associated with possible solutions to the issue they
are faced with currently. Teamwork in nursing is a leadership skill that all nurses should possess
so as to offer quality care to their patients. The charge nurse uses this skill to find a solution to a
patient who is not willing to undergo a surgical operation unless his social needs are taken care
of. The charge nurses action was appropriate because it helps address the need of a patient and
offer quality nursing care to him (Park, Kim & Kim, 2015).
Relational inquiry and clinical reasoning have to be practiced together for the provision
of quality care to patients awaiting surgery. The complex needs of a patient have to be addressed
before they undergo an operation for a better outcome. Nurses have addressed the cultural
concerns of a patient even if they do not agree with the cultural practice of the patient.
Recognizing and analyzing cues helps nurses apply well-thought decisions when solving a
complex problem in the relational inquiry.

References.
Ballantine, J. H., & Roberts, K. A. (2012). Our social world: Condensed version. Thousand
Oaks, Calif: Sage.
Hartgerink, J. M., Cramm, J. M., Bakker, T. J., van Eijsden, A. M., Mackenbach, J. P., &
Nieboer, A. P. (2014). The importance of multidisciplinary teamwork and team climate
for relational coordination among teams delivering care to older patients. Journal of
advanced nursing, 70(4), 791–799. doi:10.1111/jan.12233
Marcum, J. A. (2012). An integrated model of clinical reasoning: dual‐process theory of
cognition and metacognition. Journal of evaluation in clinical practice, 18(5), 954-961.
Park, K. O., Kim, J. K., & Kim, M. S. (2015). Operating room nurses' experiences of securing
for patient safety. Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing, 45(5), 761-772.
Pfaff, K., Baxter, P., Jack, S., & Ploeg, J. (2014). An integrative review of the factors influencing
new graduate nurse engagement in interprofessional collaboration. Journal of advanced
nursing, 70(1), 4-20.
Van Klei, W. A., Hoff, R. G., Van Aarnhem, E. E. H. L., Simmermacher, R. K. J., Regli, L. P.
E., Kappen, T. H., ... & Peelen, L. M. (2012). Effects of the introduction of the WHO
“Surgical Safety Checklist” on in-hospital mortality: a cohort study. Annals of
surgery, 255(1), 44-49.