Essay On A Nurse Delegation

Delegation is the process undertaken by a registered nurse (RN) to influence, guide, and monitor another person to perform nursing jobs. These jobs include tasks and activities performed by nurses. According to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), delegation involves transferring authority by nurses while other nursing councils calls it responsibility.
In the delegation, the keywords include accountability, relationship management, and assignment of patients, authority, simulation, responsibility, simulation, and other work assessments (Felgen & Person, 2012). Nurses assess combined data collected by other healthcare professionals so as to decide and coordinate the best recommendation and prescription that suits the patient’s needs. This method ensures optimization of available resources.
Nursing job entails decisions based on patient’s individual care and needs. The decisions are made in clinical surroundings. Shrinking resources and gradual increase in demand for medical service raises the need for medical professionals to assign care based on the quality and professional guidelines.
Nurse delegation could occur in different scenarios; these delegations help define and quantify levels of care. It is mainly based on knowledge and experience in the same field of nursing. The potential of delegation is based on what could be delegated rather than task-based practices.
This potential is determined by majorly three different ways to assign a nurse or any other medical professional. Delegates also examine the effectiveness and outcome made by staffing schedule and other patients’ assignment methods performed by registered nurses. These scenarios include non-staff or non-professional delegation, pairing, and partnering.

Non-professional delegation

The scenario involves non-professional personnel such as a ward secretary, nursing assistants, and other personnel serving in the unit. In the case of a nursing assistant, he/she works on tasks that are quite out of the job description. A nurse assistant has a minimal interaction or directions from registered nurses. The tasked performed by assistant nurses is often based on prioritizing on performing the tasks given by different medical professionals.
For example, near the end of the shift, registered nurses find that there is still a lot to be done while nursing assistants have completed their work. Before getting to other shifts, the nurse will always request for help from nursing assistants. Through assistance, certain nursing tasks seem easy to complete. Nurses have the time to concentrate on more complicated patients’ needs. Patients get better services and medical treatments when better delegations are assigned to nursing assistants. Nurse assistants get to understand various aspects of nursing, and they gain experience and other tasks found in job descriptions. These tasks include initiating antibiotics, administering blood, answering pharmacist’s questions, performing tests on lab samples, and other not-hard-to-tackle tasks.
In this situation, it is evident that the registered nurse needed help. Challenges encountered by registered nurses are not usually based on lack of available resources but due to extra work performed. The above situation is developed by the workload, which registered nurses perform; instead, these jobs could be performed by other personnel in the unit.

Paring

In this scenario, the registered nurse works together with the LPN and nursing assistant in a given task or shift. Pairing means that the registered nurse an LPN or assistant do not have to work together on a particular shift. The paired personnel could work together in a shift but no guarantee that they will work together on the next shift. When paired, they work for a particular group of patients; in this situation, delegation cases increases due to multiple tasks in a single shift. The RN and nursing assistant exchange ideas on how to prioritize care and the way accomplish the task at hand. The expected individualized result or outcome of the shift turns out to be better compared to a task handled individually (Koloroutis & Wessel, 2007).

Partnering

Partnering is different from paring because in the case of partnering, one registered nurse and one nursing assistant consistently work together; they perform medical tasks together in same shifts. Working together creates a commitment personality to maintain significant interpersonal relationships. Exchange of ideas helps advance knowledge and builds trust between partners.
Pairing is a method in delegation created to provide bonding between caregivers working together, and the methods used to assign patients ensures that different staff members care for the same group of patients. Pairing relays on the philosophy of care; this philosophy values continuity and relationships (Koloroutis & Wessel, 2007).
Assistive personnel can utilize or optimize their technical expertise when paired or work together with registered nurses. For experienced delegators, responsibility, authority, and accountability should be major concepts that need understanding. Responsibility plays a role in delegation; assistants should step up to answer for the decisions or actions of other personnel. It involves liability with undertaking different tasks in particular roles.
In the delegation, assistants are responsible for their performance on different tasks, accountability for quality work, and carrying out the jobs assigned to them. The registered nurse is responsible to follow up with the assistant or the LPN to review the results of their commitment to serve patients.

References

Koloroutis, B., & Wessel, .P.G (2007). Issues in Nursing: Developing Delegation Skills. New York: International Universities Press
Felgen, T., & Person F. (2012). Delegation and Related Concepts. New York: Wiley.