General Nursing Clinical Judgment

General clinical nursing skills encompass the foundational safety-critical practices that underpin all nursing specialties. They appear in every domain of nursing practice — medication safety, fall prevention, patient identification, restraint use, pressure injury prevention, and documentation. The RN applies them through clinical judgment: noticing cues, deciding what matters most, acting within scope, and checking the result. Patient safety context: - Medication safety: harm from medications depends on the drug and the error, so organizations add extra safeguards for high-alert medications (see below) - Falls and pressure injuries: both are prevented mainly through risk assessment and consistent nursing care - Pressure injuries: a Wounds Canada digest reports a 2004 Canadian study with a 26% prevalence across health-care settings, with about 70% of these wounds considered preventable - Wrong-patient events: prevented by consistent two-identifier verification The core safety practices that nurses must apply reliably, regardless of clinical specialty.