Delegation of Tasks to Licensed Nurses, and other Assistive Personnel
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Delegation of Tasks to Licensed Nurses, and other Assistive Personnel
- What are the key principles that a registered nurse should consider when delegating tasks to other healthcare personnel? What are three tasks that a registered nurse may assign to a licensed practical nurse and three tasks that a registered nurse may assign other assistive personnel?
Registered nurses (RN) have a number of principles considered when delegating nurses to ensure accountability of the results. The first principle is that the registered nurse is responsible and accountable for the nursing practice provision. That’s because the nurse is in charge of the delegation, and therefore they must ensure proper coordination. A registered nurse determines the right resources to be utilized when giving care and also directs care. Registered nurses perform task delegation or care elements; and not the process of nursing itself. Another principle followed is that the nurses must consider the procedures, policies, skills, and knowledge of the person to whom they are delegating the tasks (American Nurses Association, 2012). The process of delegation is based on the judgment of the nurse with regards to how the task is complex, the competence of the delegate, and the level of supervision required. Another consideration when delegating tasks is being accountable for the systems established to monitor, assess, verify, and rely on delegation requirements. Finally, the registered nurse has to acknowledge that delegating tasks must have mutual respect for all the parties involved. A facility is responsible for ensuring that a registered nurse can access the right information concerning the competency of the delegates (American Nurses Association, 2012).
The three tasks that RN my delegate to the licensed practical nurse include monitoring of the patient’s findings, administration of medicine, and tracheostomy care. Also, the RN delegates the following three tasks to the other assistive personnel, which include ambulating, specimen collection, and bed-making (American Nurses Association, 2012).
- Discuss approaches that a nurse might take to assist in resolving a conflict between a client and their family. What actions by the nurse help ensure that clients participate in the decision -making process about their care?
Nurses can use mediation and accommodation approaches to assist in resolving a conflict between a client and their family. In case of any conflict between a client and their family, a nurse can be the third party to help the client and their family to surface their issues (Gerardi, 2014). The nurse, in this case, creates a safe environment for the client and their family to seek options that would enable them to arrive at a workable solution (Gerardi, 2014). Another approach nurses use to assist in resolving a conflict between a client, and their family is through accommodation. Sometimes patients may be irritating to the family, and as a result, conflict can occur. Nurses understand the client’s situation better from a medical perspective. Therefore, they should advise the family to accommodate the client whatever the case (Gerardi, 2014). This can be done by informing the family of some of the problems that the client may have. Mayo Clinic nurses have been successful with the use of mediation and accommodation approaches to resolving client-family conflicts. The actions a nurse can take to increase decision-making participation by clients include communication of any information about the client’s health and ways of administering treatment and taking the clients through educational programs to understand how to make decisions concerning their health (National, 2012).
- Explain one or more ways nurses can become involved in setting and auditing patient care standards or participating in other quality control/improvement activities within their organization.
Nurses can get involved in setting and auditing patient care standards in two main ways. The first one is joining an already organized audit by helping in data collection (Limb, Fowler, Gundogan, Koshy & Agha, 2017). Using this approach to participate in auditing patient care standards, a nurse may ask the doctors if they have any audits in which they can assist. Also, national audits can offer an opportunity for nurses to take part in patient care standard audits. A good example is STARSurg run multicenter national audits in the UK, which provides nurses with a chance to collect data for the site (Limb et al., 2017). The second way nurses can participate in patient care standards audit is by planning their audit (Limb et al., 2017). The advantage of this approach is that the nurse will have an opportunity to pick an audit that they are interested in. However, during the planning of the audit, a nurse needs to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely in setting the objectives so that the audit can meet patient care standards.
References
American Nurses Association (2012). Principles for Delegation by Registered Nurses to Unlicensed Assistive Personnel (UAP). https://www.nursingworld.org/~4af4f2/globalassets/docs/ana/ethics/principlesofdelegation.pdf
Gerardi, D. (2014). Using mediation techniques to manage conflict and create healthy work environments. AACN Advanced Critical Care, 15(2), 182-195. https://www.nursingcenter.com/journalarticle?Article_ID=593915&Journal_ID=230572&Issue_ID=593907
Limb, C., Fowler, A., Gundogan, B., Koshy, K., & Agha, R. (2017). How to conduct a clinical audit and quality improvement project. International journal of surgery. Oncology, 2(6), e24. https://journals.lww.com/ijsoncology/Fulltext/2017/07000/How_to_conduct_a_clinical_audit_and_quality.5.aspx?WT.mc_id=HPxADx20100319xMP
National, C. G. C. U. (2012). Patient Experience in Adult NHS Services: Improving the Experience of Care for People Using Adult NHS Services: Patient Experience in Generic Terms. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK115233/