The nursing gaze at the heart of clinical judgement: A proposal for situating nursing practice

This article develops the concept of the “nursing gaze,” which commits nurses to making informed and reasoned clinical decisions. The nursing gaze comprises four structuring elements: the severity of the illness, the assessment of functional difficulties, the patient’s experience of the illness, and how the person copes with it. It is developed through a process of clinical reasoning, in which the knowledge mobilized gives meaning to the collected data and informs the formulation of clinical judgments. Based on these clinical judgments, nursing knowledge is used to select relevant interventions and expected outcomes for each individual. To define and explain the nursing gaze and its place in nursing practice, this article aims to develop the concept of the nursing gaze based on Tanner’s model of clinical judgment, combined with nursing theories, and its associated evaluation grid.