Act of transferring the responsibility of performing tasks

Act of transferring the responsibility of performing tasks

Delegation refers to the act of transferring the responsibility of performing the task from one nursing professional to another. The Texas Board of Nursing states that nurses must comply with the Standards of Nursing Practice when delegation occurs. This means when delegating or being delegated to, the nurse must ensure it is within both parties scope of practice. According to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (2016), “Regardless of how the state/jurisdiction defines delegation as compared to assignment, appropriate delegation allows for the transition of responsibility in a safe and consistent manner. The licensed nurse transfers the performance of an activity, skill, or procedure to a delegate. However, the practice pervasive functions of clinical reasoning, nursing judgment, or critical decision making cannot be delegated.” Therefore, the nurse does not lose responsibility for the task and the patient receiving the intervention just because the nurse delegated the task. Barrow and Sharma (2020) state that nurses can use the five rights of delegation to make a safe decision while delegating a task. The five rights are the right task, the right circumstance, the right person, the risk supervision, and the right direction.

References

Barrow, J.M., & Sharma, S. (2020). Five Rights of Nursing Delegation. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519519/ (Links to an external site.)

National Council of State Boards of Nursing. (2016). National Guidelines for Nursing Delegation. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 7(1),5‐14. Retrieved from https://www.ncsbn.org/NCSBN_Delegation_Guidelines.pdf

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.