Relationships Between Clinical Decision-Making Patterns and Self-Efficacy and Nursing Professionalism in Korean Pediatric Nurses

• Clinical decision-making is an essential nursing process in pediatric nursing.
• We identify five clinical decision-making patterns for pediatric nurses.
• The clinical decision-making patterns are relevant to self-efficacy.
• The clinical decision-making patterns are also relevant to nursing professionalism.

As pediatric nurses must make decisions on a regular basis when caring for hospitalized children, clinical decision-making abilities are necessary in this profession. In the present study, we explored clinical decision-making patterns and their association with self-efficacy and nursing professionalism in pediatric nurses. We surveyed 173 pediatric nurses and analyzed the relationships between their clinical decision-making patterns and self-efficacy and nursing professionalism. Factor analysis identified 5 clinical decision-making patterns: patient–family–nurse collaborative (PNC), individual patient-oriented (IP), nurse model-oriented (NM), pattern-oriented intuitive (PI), and nursing knowledge-oriented (NK). The most frequently observed clinical decision-making pattern was the PNC. The self-efficacy and nursing professionalism were found to be higher in pediatric nurses using the IP and NM, and were lower for those using the PNC. Thus, the present results suggest that pediatric nurses' clinical decision-making patterns are influenced by nursing professionalism and self-efficacy. Therefore, intervention programs focusing on these variables might improve clinical decision-making in pediatric nurses.