Use of intuition by critical care nurses: a phenomenological study

BACKGROUND: Intuition is defined as an irrational unconscious type of knowing. This concept was incorporated into nursing discipline for 3 decades, but nowadays its application is uncertain and ignored by educational institutions. Therefore, this study aimed to explore critical care nurses’ understanding of the use of intuition in clinical practice. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In a descriptive phenomenological study, 12 nurses employed in critical care units of the hospitals affiliated with Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, were recruited to a study using purposive, semistructured interviews, which were then written down verbatim. The data were managed by MaxQDA 10 software and analyzed as qualitative, with Colaizzi’s seven-stage approach. RESULTS: Of the 12 nurses who participated in the study, seven (58.3%) were female and married, 88.3% (ten) had a Bachelor of Nursing (BSc) degree, and the means ± SD of age, job experience, and critical care experience were 36.66±7.01, 13.75±6.82, and 7.66±3.36 years, respectively. We extracted three main themes, namely “patient conditions”, “nurse readiness”, and “outcome”, and seven subthemes – including “clinical signs”, “patient behaviors”, “prognosis”, “being sensitive”, “desire to act”, “prediction”, and “satisfaction” – integral to understanding the use of intuition in clinical practice by critical care nurses. CONCLUSION: The findings showed that some nurses were attracted by the patients’ conditions and were more intuitive about them, and following their intuition prepared the nurses to under-take more appropriate measures. The positive results that the majority of the nurses experienced convinced them to follow their intuitions more often.