Critical Thinking for Health Care Professionals

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The labor and delivery department is faced with the problem of high infant mortality rates. One of the nurses claims that this is due to other nurses not receiving adequate training to deliver babies, the number of nurses handling delivering mothers in each shift are not enough and also due to the fact that nurses are not adequately reimbursed for the amount of work that they do. While some of the claims in the nurses' argument may have some truth, it would not be fair to say it is only these three reasons that are responsible for the high infant mortality rate as compared to other health care providers. The nurse in this instance is ignoring other fundamental factors such as the quality of healthcare, the condition of healthcare facility, premature babies or the health condition of the mother. A study done recently found that the highest reason for high infant mortality in the United States was prematurity in babies rather than lack of skilled nurses to attend the delivering mothers (Nurse.com, 2009). However, the fact that the labor and delivery department records higher infant mortality rate relative to other healthcare providers warrants an evaluation on the nurses' arguments (Elder & Paul, 2007).

The claim that high infant mortality rate in the labor and delivery department is high due to lack of adequate training to some nurses in baby delivery may have some ground in it. It is usually imperative that labor and delivery nurses on the top in knowing any new development in prenatal care and delivery in order to be able to effectively with any complications during birth or nay emerging issues in this field of care (EduDecisions, 2011). This aids in continual learning and training for the nurses. Therefore a nurse who does not stay on top of new developing knowledge though qualified to perform their work may not be able to understand the changing prenatal environment and may therefore not be effective enough in doing ...