Delegation in the Health Care Setting Essay

During emergency cases in the labor room, the nurse in charge must delegate duties to ensure everything goes on smoothly. There are principles and basic steps that a registered nurse has to follow when delegating duties. RN must ensure that the nurse assistant available is competent enough to handle the particular task (Nagelkerk, 2006). Secondly, the RN must not delegate complex duties to the assistance nurse but can only assign simple duties such as patient care. In the labor ward, the nursing assistant can keep on checking the patient and keep reporting patient’s progress to the registered nurse (Nagelkerk, 2006). Thirdly, the RNs have to ensure that they are in a position to supervise the tasks they delegate while also ensure that the assistance nurse is competent and experienced to handle the assigned duty. Additionally, the RNs must ensure that during the process of delegating task, there is no violation of Nursing Practice Act that can be achieved through working together with the state nursing board (Kelly and Marthaler, 2010).

In most cases the State Nurse Practice Act has the responsibility of determining parameters for delegating duties for nurses although most countries authorize RNs to delegate duties (American Nurses Association, 2011). The state requires that, all decisions concerning delegation of duties must be based on the fundamental principles including “protection of the health, safety, and welfare of the public” (American Nurses Association, 2011). The RNs must delegate duties to nurses who are under supervision and who are competent enough to promote quality health care (Kelly, 2008). The states acts also require that, RNs can only delegate duties based on the need and condition of the patient (Kelly and Marthaler, 2010). According to the state regulations, RNs must take full accountability for particular nursing practices and they should consider issues of quality service delivery before delegating duties.

In the labor and deliver unit the midwife is always in charge. As such, delegation of duties by a midwife is determined by numerous factors and the midwife has to clarify some issues before deciding whether it is necessary and appropriate to delegate any duty (Nagelkerk, 2006). For instance if the midwife has an emergence, it is appropriate that she should delegate duties to others. Secondly, where there are people who are experienced and competent to handle the task the midwife can delegate the duty but retain the overall responsibility. Thirdly, the midwife has to consider a task that is not complex for the assistant nurse to handle, while in a situation where the patient needs immediate care or constantly need to be observed, the midwife can assign someone this duty to ensure that the patient gets quality care. However, the midwife should be in a position to offer support and supervise the assistant nurse.

The decision to delegate duties by RNs can result in safe and effective health care, however, RNs must be very careful when making the decision to delegate duties and choosing the appropriate personnel who must be delegated a particular task (American Psychological Association, 2010). As such, RNs must determine suitable nursing practice by using nursing skills, personal judgment based on professional skills, and must consider all legal requirements when delegating a task (Kelly and Marthaler, 2010). Nagelkerk, (2006) argues that a RN must also make a decision to delegate duties putting into consideration issues such as “State Nurse Practice Act and professional standards.” To make the appropriate decision, RNs are advised to seek further guidance from their supervisors when considering delegating duties (American Nurses Association, 2011).

Today, delegation of duties have become complex and one of the challenges nurses face when delegating duties is the complexity of getting an assistance nurse with competent skills. Nagelkerk (2006) says that although delegating duties may be beneficial, RNs may not get the right person to delegate duties due to lack of enough skills in a particular area. Another challenge is that the hospital management often does not have a clear guideline and lack enough understanding of the parameters that are followed in the nursing arena, and particularly in the hospital setting (Nagelkerk, 2006).

Delegation can have both pros and cons. The advantage is that, delegating tasks gives the hospital an opportunity to benefit from skills of people who are experienced on a particular task. When skilled assistant nurses are given a task, they work hard to portray professionalism in their area of specialization bringing new perspectives in the nursing practice (Nagelkerk, 2006). For this reason, the midwife or RN is able to save time and handle other complex issues. Once a task has been delegated, the midwife is able to give more attention to other patients with complex condition