Clinical decision making: a comparison between greece and finland

Background: Clinical decisions made by nurses daily are an important element in providing the best possible quality care to patients.
Aims: The purpose of this study was to explore and compare Finnish and Greek nurses’ clinical decisions made in medical, surgical, and critical care settings.
Materials and Methods: Data were collected using a clinical decision-making questionnaire (CDMQ) from the literature. A total of 330 questionnaires were collected (169 from Finnish nurses and 145 from Greek nurses), from three public hospitals in Finland and three in Greece. The study was conducted from March to June 2020. The results were analyzed using the statistical program SPSS 23.
Results: Study results demonstrated that Finnish nurses make better clinical decisions regarding the provision of nursing care (p <0.05), supervision and administrative decisions (p <0.05) as well as decisions related to the nurses extended role (p <0.05). In addition, there were differences in the clinical decisions made by nurses in the medical, surgical and critical care settings and specifically regarding decisions related to emergency interventions (p <0.05), change in medication (p <0.05), offering discharge information to patients/families (p <0.05), scheduling additional examinations and discharging patients(p <0.05).
Conclusions: There is an urgent need to establish up-to-date legally recognized nurses’ duties and responsibilities in Greece, hire adequate nursing staff and implement the nursing process to help nurses improve their clinical skills and consequently offer quality nursing care.