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This study described and compared the cognitive strategies of diagnostic reasoning used by junior nursing students (n = 15), senior nursing students (n = 13), and practicing nurses (n = 15). Verbal responses to three videotaped vignettes provided the data. Findings suggested that diagnostic reasoning processes of both nurses and nursing students can be described by a general model developed from studies of physicians. Subjects activated diagnostic hypotheses early in the encounter and used systematic information gathering to rule in and rule out hypotheses. With increased levels of knowledge and experience, there was a trend toward more systematic data acquisition and greater accuracy in diagnosis. The number of hypotheses activated, the earliness with which they were activated, and their diagnostic accuracy were task-specific components of the process, but selection of data-acquisition strategies appeared to be more generalizable across cases.
Tanner et al. (Sun,) studied this question.