Delegation Example in a Healthcare Setting

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“When you delegate, you entrust another person to act in your placed for that particular task or cluster of tasks.” (Hansten & Jackson, 2009, p. 274). The nursing profession has gone through many changes of its practice model. With the past and projected nursing shortages, and the financial challenges of many organizations, nurses are being asked to work with more unlicensed assistive personnel (UAP). In order to provide safe and effective care to our patients, nurses are being asked to assume more of a coordinator of care role, while delegating many tasks to the UAP’s. This has caused much frustration for many nurses as they have never had formal delegation training. Many nurses fear that if the task is not done by them, it may not be done correctly or perhaps not even get done at all. “Effective delegation is based on ones state nurse practice act and an understanding of the concepts of responsibility, authority, and accountability.” (Weydt, 2010, p. 1).
There are four major steps in the delegation process, which closely mirrors the nursing process. This process is an ongoing cyclical process which repeats itself as necessary. The four steps include assessment, planning, intervention and evaluation.
In the assessment phase, the nurse must first gather data. The right task, and then the right person to perform that task must be determined. In order to do that, the nurse must assess the competencies of her delegates. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your delegates is important, but the nurse must also know what other resources are available to help those delegates with weaknesses grow and be able to be more effective within the team.
The second step is the planning phase. In this phase it is important to determine what outcomes are the most important to obtain. The focus should be on how the outcomes will contribute to the patient and

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