The focus of this article is the background and use of the critical decision method in nursing research. The purpose is to present a synthesis of the body of work whose authors used the critical decision method to explore nurses' cognitive work. For this integrative review of literature, I used the 5-step process: problem formulation, literature search, data evaluation, data analysis, and presentation. Synthesis of the 7 studies uncovered evidence of nurses' cognitive processes and demands of their practice environments and affirmed the method as a valuable tool for eliciting experienced nurses' practice knowledge making nursing expertise explicit.