Implicit and explicit knowledge -: influences on action in critical situations

Basis for the presented study is the up to now not completely answered question why persons differ regarding their performance in critical situations even if they do recur to a comparable explicit knowledge base. We assume that these performance differences ground in differences in implicit knowledge acquired through experience. For this reason 15 nurses were not only tested regarding their explicit knowledge and its facets (action-related and theoretical knowledge) with an half structured interview, but also their implicit knowledge was explicated. The dependent variable was performance in a simulated critical nursing situation. Exact statistical tests were performed to determine if successfully performing nurses do differ in the respective forms of knowledge compared with less successfully performing ones. Comparisons of the groups showed no significant differences regarding the explicit knowledge whereas for implicit knowledge such differences exist. Successfully performing nurses displayed more implicit knowledge than less successfully persons which relied stronger on explicit knowledge as exhibited in the interview. In the discussion these results are imbedded in other research and an outlook on possible consequences is given.