Prioritizing and delegation are import responsibilities in nursing. As a nurse it is important to understand the process and guidelines to prioritizing task and delegating functions. Prioritizing task requires the nurse to decide which functions deserves intermediate attention and are high priorities verses functions that are intermediate or low priorities. Organizing functions as high, intermediate or low priorities allows the nurse to delegate functions to accomplish all needed task. Delegating function is reassigning task to another person without reassigning responsibility, as a nurse it is important to understand this process in a typical work day. Management of a patient care depends on the essential skill of setting priorities. …show more content…
As mentioned earlier delegation is the responsibility of reassigning task to someone else, or to be more specific someone on the health care team. Delegating, to the healthcare team means assigning functions to other RNs, LPNs or UAPs based on the needs of the patients and skills of the team members. The oversee nurse must understand although functions and task are delegated to health care team members the responsibility to ensure the task is completed accurately is still that of the overseeing nurse. In the course of a given day a nurse will oversee the care of several patients and must have help in completing the functions for each patient. The assigned team members will help the RN accomplish the workload throughout the course of a typical work day. In order to delegate functions the RN or the delegator must understand the rights of delegating. According to the , Exit/Nclex Examination Study Guide, there are five rights to delegating functions, these rights help the overseeing RN ensure functions are being properly delegated. The RN must first determine if the task can be safely delegated and the circumstances are within guidelines for completion. The healthcare team member must be able to properly perform the requested task; therefore the overseeing RN must make sure the right person is chosen for the job. The RN must also …show more content…
One patient is post-op day one from cardiac surgery on morphine PCA pump. Another patient is elderly, confused, incontinent, and tries to climb out of bed sometimes. The third patient is alert, oriented, walkie-talkie individual who was admitted for a flare up due to Crohn’s disease and is scheduled for a colonoscopy the next day. Lastly, you just found out that a patient is being admitted from the emergency department for chest pain.” In reading this example of a nurses work day, let’s look how functions can be prioritized and delegated to accomplish the goal of providing quality client care. Presented in the example with four patients, the day would begin with chart review and prioritizing the patients based on their problems and the urgency of the patients