Critical Thinking in Clinical Practice: Improving the Quality of Judgments and Decisions

Decisions are influenced by a variety of fallacies and biases that we can learn how to avoid. Critical thinking values, knowledge, and skills, therefore, are integral to evidence-based practice. These emphasize the importance of recognizing ignorance as well as knowledge and the vital role of criticism in discovering how to make better decisions. This book is for clinicians--clinicians who are willing to say "I don't know."

Critical Thinking in Clinical Practice, Second Edition is designed to enhance readers' skills in making well-informed, ethical decisions. Making such decisions is no easy task. Decisions are made in uncertain, changing environments with time pressures. Interested parties, such as the pharmaceutical industry, spend millions of dollars to influence decisions made. Drawing on a wide range of related literature, this book describes common pitfalls in clinical reasoning as well as strategies for avoiding them--sometimes called mind-tools. Mental health and allied professionals will come away from this text with knowledge of how classification decisions, a focus on pathology, and reliance on popularity can cause errors. Hazards involved in data collection and team decision making such as groupthink are discussed.

Part 1 provides an overview of the context in which clinicians make decisions.
Part 2 describes common sources of error.
Part 3 describes decision aids including the process of evidence-based practice.
Part 4 describes the application of related content to different helping phases including assessment, intervention, and evaluation.
Part 5 suggests obstacles to making well-informed decisions and how to encourage lifelong learning.

This new Second Edition has been completely updated with expanded coverage on:

• Evidence-based practice
• Screening issues and practice errors
• Lifelong learning
• Problem solving
• Decision making

An interactive, dynamic book filled with insightful examples, useful lists and guidelines, and exercises geared to encourage critical thinking, Critical Thinking in Clinical Practice, Second Edition provides an essential resource for helping professionals and students.

Eileen Gambrill, PHD, is Hutto Patterson Professor of Child and Family Studies in the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her BA degree from the University of Pennsylvania, her MSW degree from Bryn Mawr School of Social Work and Social research, and her PhD degree from the University of Michigan in Social Work and Psychology. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford and Tel Aviv Universities and received a Benjamin Meeker Fellowship from the University of Bristol in 1999. She has won two Pro Humanitate Awards from the North American Resource Center for Child Welfare, one in 2001 and another in 2004. Her areas of interest include professional decision making, ethics, and the integration of research and practice in the helping professions. Books include Social Work practice: A Critical Thinker's Guide (2nd ed.;2006), Critical Thinking For Social Workers Exercises for the Helping Professions (2nded.; with Len Gibbs, 1999), and Controversial Issues in Social Work, Ethics, Values and Professions (with Robert Pruger, 1997).
Gambrill served as Editor-in-Chief of Social Work Research and Abstracts 1984-1988 and as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Social Work Education, 2000-2003, and currently is on the editorial boards of many journals. She was elected by Division 25 members to serve on the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association 2003-2005 and elected to the Board of Directors of the Council on Social Work Education 2000-2002. She is a licensed psychologist in the state of California.