The relationship between knowledge and clinical performance in novice and experienced critical care nurses

Purpose rpose of this study was to measure directly the knowledge and performance of novice and experienced critical care nurses in a simulated task environment. s were required to control the physiologic deterioration of patients with respiratory compromise in 4 scenarios and were also tested on their knowledge of the constructs present in the scenarios. s sults indicate that experienced nurses possessed highly superior knowledge when compared with novice nurses (P < .001). The results further demonstrated a lack of reliable differences in actual clinical performance when nurses were considered solely on the basis of their term of experience. Group differences in performance were demonstrated only when nurses who had achieved board certification in critical care nursing were compared with the remaining participants. sion sults demonstrate the lack of linkage between knowledge and clinical performance, which calls into question the supposition by many in nursing that knowledge and performance are inextricably linked.