Great question and glad you asked! The nursing process is still foundational and will not go away anytime soon. Tanner recognized in her model of clinical judgment that these two processes are different but complement each other in practice. Imagine the nursing process as the big picture and the broad strokes that a nurse uses to provide patient care. Clinical judgment whether it be Tanner’s model or the six-step NCSBN model emphasizes the little picture when a decision needs to be made because a problem is recognized. In order to recognize and analyze cues which are the first two steps of the NCSBN model, the nurse must use the first step of the nursing process which is assessment. But in addition to assessing the nurse must be able to understand the significance of clinical data that is collected which is reflected in the higher level analysis of process two and then recognize what this data means which is process three and represented in step two of nursing process which is establishing a diagnosis or nursing priority.

Process four of generating solutions and process five of taking action capture the essence of planning and implementation of the nursing process or the final step six of evaluating outcomes captures the essence of evaluation with the nursing process. I hope this helps and enables you to see how practical this new clinical judgment model is to the practice setting and can make a difference to strengthen the thinking of students not only for the licensure exam but for clinical practice.