Question

Provision 4: “The nurse is responsible and accountable for individual nursing practice and determines the appropriate delegation of tasks consistent with the nurse’s obligation to provide optimum patient care.”

Imagine you are the head nurse in a senior living facility. You have 36 residents; normally there are two nurses with four nursing assistants. It is night shift, and the other nurse was in an accident on the way to work. Hence, it is you, 36 residents, and four CNAs. One of the CNAs is due to graduate from nursing school in one month. 30 of the 36 patients have 9 PM medicine due.

1. To get medicine to the patients on time, would you allow the CNA who is close to finishing school to help administer the medicine? Would this be an appropriate delegation of tasks, considering that an RN must complete medication administration? Which is more important: delegation of tasks or timely medication administration for patients?

Answer 1

Delegation of task is more appropriate than timely medication administration fro patients. Becuase delegating tasks to wrong persons may contribute harm to the patient and affect the quality of car provided. A registerd nurse have the reponsibility to delgate the tasks to effective personnel based on their knowledge of training and skill and has the duty to supervise them. Nursing interventions that require independent require independent nursing knowledge, skill or judgement susch as assessment, patient teaching and evaluation of care are responsibilities of registered nurse and cannot be delegated. You can delegate the task of medication administration to CNA who is going to complete her graduation within 1 month under your supervision. As a nurse, you have to use your professional knowledge. experience and professional judgement to determine appropriate activities that may be delegated to nursing aides/assisstants based on the patient's needs, Unauthorised personnel's education and training and extent of supeervision required

In this scenario, 30 patients are due for medication administration and only one RN is available. Hence, as a supervisor you can allocate half of the patients to the CNA who is going to complete her graduation within 1 month under your supervision and thus promoting the safety of your patients