Journal of Advanced Nursing, 1997, 26, 194–202 Intuition: a critical review of the research and rhetoric Lindy King BN(Education) DipAppSc(Nursing) RN Lecturer, Department of Nursing Studies, King’s College London, London and Jane V. Appleton BA(Hons) MSc RGN RHV PGCEA Senior Lecturer, School of Health and Human Sciences, The University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, England Accepted for publication 10 June 1996 KING L. & APPLETON J.V. (1997) Journal of Advanced Nursing 26, 194–202 Intuition: a critical review of the research and rhetoric This paper will explore the concept of intuition in nursing from an acute care and community nursing perspective. It will consider definitions of intuition and examine the research which can inform our understanding of this important component of decision making. In the current health service climate, which demands measurable research-based evidence, the involvement of intuition as an element of judgement is often denigrated. The result is that many nurses are being forced to be covert in their use of this crucial aspect of judgement and focus solely on the conscious elements of decision-making. However, research evidence would suggest that intuition occurs in response to knowledge, is a trigger for action and/or reflection and thus has a direct bearing on analytical processes in patient/client care. The authors therefore argue that the essential nature of intuition cannot be ignored in the practice, management, education and research of nursing. Keywords: intuition, decision making, research, gut feeling the clinical cues, they simply sensed that something was INTRODUCTION going to happen. Pyles and Stern (1983) also identified the importance of clinical experience in the development of Recognition of the use of intuition in clinical nursing prac- tice has risen in prominence over the last 20 years. The gut feelings and suggested that intuition was an integral part of comprehensive patient care. roots of understanding of intuition in nursing were initially identified by Carper (1978) who drew from the Several authors have sought to identify the defining attri- butes of intuition. Schraeder and Fischer (1986, p. 161) earlier works of Dewey (1958) and Polanyi (1962). Carper (1978) identified the fundamental importance of intuition suggested that ‘intuitive perception in nursing practice is the ability to experience the elements of a clinical situation in ways of knowing in nursing and this remains a seminal work to this day. Pyles and Stern’s (1983) research was as a whole, to solve a problem or reach a decision with limited concrete information’. Rew (1986) outlined one of the first to consider the intuitive component of the ‘gut-feelings’ of their subjects. In this study, which exam- intuition more clearly by describing it as ‘knowledge of a fact or truth, as a whole; immediate possession of knowl- ined clinical decision-making amongst critical care nurses, the nurses were not overtly aware of a relationship with edge; and knowledge independent of the linear reasoning process’, and in 1993 McCormack followed suit with simi- lar defining attributes of intuition. Dreyfus and Dreyfus Correspondence: Lindy King, Department of Nursing Studies, King’s (1986) examined the characteristics of intuitive judgement College London, Cornwall House, Waterloo Road, London SE1 8WA, England. in depth and outlined six key aspects as ‘pattern 194 © 1997 Blackwell Science Ltd