Question: Applying Scientific Models to Decision Making

You are a registered nurse (RN) who graduated 3 years ago. During the last 3 years, your responsibilities in your first position have increased. Although you enjoy your family (spouse and one preschool-aged child), you realize that you love your job and that your career is very important to you. Recently, you and your spouse decided to have another baby. At that time, you and your spouse reached a joint decision that if you had another baby, you wanted to reduce your work time and spend more time at home with the children. Last week, your supervisor told you that the charge nurse is leaving. You were thrilled and excited when she said that she wants to appoint you to the position. Yesterday, you found out that you and your spouse are expecting a baby. Last night, you spoke with your spouse about your career future. Your spouse is an attorney whose practice has suddenly gained momentum. Although the two of you have shared child rearing equally until this point, your spouse is not sure how much longer this can be done if the law practice continues to expand. If you take the position, which you would like to do, it would mean full-time work. You want the decision that you and your spouse reach to be well thought out, as it has far reaching consequences and concerns many people.

ASSIGNMENT: Determine what you should do. After you have made your decision, get together in a group (four to six people) and share your decisions. Were they the same? How did you approach the problem solving differently from others in your group? Was a rational systematic problem-solving process used, or was the chosen solution based more on intuition? How many alternatives were generated? Did some of the group members identify alternatives that you had not considered? Was a goal(s) or objective identified? How did your personal values influence your decision?