Critical thinking for nursing leadership

Critical thinking has become an important consideration in the process of education. The complexities of life have created turbulent white water for the leader as well as for all people in the 21st century.1 The health care leader now must be able to exemplify in managing others a personal commitment to acting in a manner that reflects the demands of sustained complexity.2 This complexity requires in the leader a basic and personal engagement that reflects for others the balance and discipline of critical thinking processes. To do this, it is important that the leader engender a fundamental understanding of the various definitions of critical thinking as an impetus for translating critical process into the action of leadership. Doing so affords a foundational toolkit of concepts that can produce the essential discipline of critical thinking that is a part of the good leadership response to the chaos and complexity of the age.3