Bias affects nurses’ clinical judgment, review finds

Nursing researchers have studied many cognitive and implicit biases in nursing, with most studies demonstrating the existence of bias, according to a scoping review of 77 research pieces in the International Journal of Nursing Studies. These biases affected nursing judgments and decisions, such as pain management and triage scoring. Future research should seek to develop interventions to decrease the systematic errors in nurses’ clinical judgment due to bias, according to the authors. “If we want to make health care safer, and improve the quality of nursing practice, cognitive and implicit biases cannot be overlooked,” the authors noted.