Advances in Nursing Science Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 352–361 Copyright c  2010 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Concept Analysis of Cognitive Artifacts Sharon McLane, PhD, MBA, RN-BC ; James P. Turley, PhD, RN ; Adol Esquivel, PhD, MD ; Joan Engebretson, DrPH, RN, AHN-BC ; Kimberly A. Smith, PhD, MS, MT (ASCP), CPHIMSS ; Geri L. Wood, PhD, RN, FAAN; Jiajie Zhang, PhD Cognitive artifacts—information displays that inform thought processes and increase knowledge—fulfill a fundamental role in distributed cognition. Cognitive work—the mental processes of selecting and evaluating data, reasoning, and making decisions—is guided and in- formed by cognitive artifacts, especially in clinical areas. The importance of cognitive artifacts to cognitive work suggests the need to study and comprehensively understand cognitive arti- facts prepared and used by the clinical nurses and how these documents influence and guide nursing practice. This article identifies and describes the attributes of effectively constructed cognitive artifacts using the concept analysis process described by Walker and Avant. Key words: , cognitive artifact, concept analysis, distributed cognition, external knowledge representation, internal knowledge representation, nurse cognition C ognitive artifacts, or external knowledge representations, are purpose-driven 1 data displays created to communicate, augment, and influence human reasoning, understanding, and decision making. 2 The content of cognitive artifacts interacts with our knowledge, mediating our reasoning and shaping knowledge and understanding of our environment. 3 The interaction and interdependence of external knowledge representations and our personal internal knowledge representations are constructs Author Affiliations: Lakeland Regional Medical Center, Lakeland, Florida (Dr McLane), The University of Texas M. D. Anderson cancer Center (Dr Wood), The University of Texas School of Biomedical Informatics (Drs McLane, Turley, and Zhang), The University of Texas School of Nursing (Drs Engebretson and Wood), The University of Texas at Austin (Ms Smith), and St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System (Dr Esquivel), Houston, Texas. Funding: American Organization of Nurse Execu- tives Institute for Patient Care Research and Educa- tion/Health Research and Educational Trust. Correspondence: Sharon McLane, PhD, MBA, RN-BC, Lakeland Regional Medical Center, 1324 Lakeland Hills, Blvd., Lakeland, FL 33805 (Sharon.McLane@lrmc.com). of distributed cognition theory. Figure 1 is a model depicting the interaction between external knowledge representations (which include cognitive artifacts, other people, or other environmental factors) and the internal knowledge representations of an individual (formal and experiential knowledge). This interaction results in or creates the cognitive work space of the individual. 4,5 Cognitive artifacts and cognitive work are highly interdependent constructs of cogni- tive science. 4−9 Reasoning processes are me- diated by the interaction between inter- nal knowledge representations and external knowledge representations, or cognitive ar- tifacts, in the environment. For example, as you read this article your attention is directed by a cognitive artifact, regardless of whether you are reading a paper version or an on- line version of this journal. While reading this article you are evaluating the content in the context of your personal knowledge, as- sessing the information, and formulating an overall judgment of the accuracy and impor- tance of the content you are reading. The ex- perience of reading this article will prompt you to (1) reinforce your current knowledge Copyright © 2010 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. 352