Delegation in Healthcare Units and Prioritization of Tasks

This article discusses the importance of delegation in healthcare units and prioritization of tasks for effective patient care. It also covers nursing competency and decision making skills, benefits of conflict resolution, and multidisciplinary teams in healthcare. The article provides case studies and activities to help readers understand the concepts better.

Module 1
Delegation can be explained as the multi-faceted skill sets that need to be harbored by every
healthcare professional in the healthcare units. Delegation is a complex procedure in the
professional healthcare practices that require sophisticated clinical judgments as well as final
accountability of the patient’s care (Barrow & McMillan, 2018). Delegation is considered to
be one of the most important skills in present day because of the growing nursing shortage,
rising of the patient acuity and the new emphasis that is put on patient satisfaction and patient
centered care. Registered nurses have the responsibility of conducting patient ongoing
reviews about their practices along with specific attentions given to the delegation procedures
(Kim & Gu, 2015). Five important aspects need to be followed by the professionals. These
steps include consideration of the correct task followed by taking into account the right
circumstances. They should be also considering the right person as well as the right directions
as well as communication and even right supervision and evaluation. In the present scenario,
different scenarios have been provided. The healthcare professionals need to undertake
proper delegation of the tasks to make sure that patient safety as well as quality care can be
provided.
The first priority would be the elderly postoperative patient. This is because she had
suffered a fall and had become unconscious. Becoming unconscious raises the concern of
facing injury in the head region that might become fatal if not taken care. Therefore, I would
need to make a met call. A code blue should be also initiated as she had faced a facial injury.
The second priority in the situation would be administering the antibiotics to the
patient named Mrs. Chew. She had already missed her antibiotics and her infusion had
tissues. Therefore, I will be delegating the task to the NUM. the NUM would be able to

handle the situation well. Enrolled nurses will not be able to complete this task as they are not
competent and so, I will not delegate them this task.
The third priority would be providing medication to the patient named Mr. Esposito.
It is not stated in the case study about the particular type of medication that needs to be
administered. Therefore, I can delegate this responsibility to an enrolled nurse who would be
able to handle the situation effectively.
The fourth priority would be handling the visitor of the patient named Mrs. Smith.
The visitor had fainted but as she is an outsider, the nursing professionals cannot treat her in
the healthcare wards. In this case, the delegation should be done to an AIN. She should stay
with the outsider where an ambulance cab be called for her. Accordingly, she should be
admitted to the emergency department and a doctor can attend her there.
The fifth priority would be delegating the work of the block toilet issue. I would be
delegating the task to the ward clerk. He would be calling for the emergency maintenance
request.
The medication error had already occurred one week ago. It had not been discussed
and addressed at that time. Therefore, I should apply my reasoning skill. As it is already late,
I should only focus on this issue after all the emergencies are tackled effectively.
Module 2
Activity 1:
1. Tribalism refers to the state of existed as the tribe or advocating for an association for a
tribe. It implies the possession of a strong culture and ethnic identity that separate a bunch of
people from the community (Southall, 2018).

2. Power inequality and tribalism influence individuals by feeding certain lies about cultural
beliefs and therefore it becomes a huge hindrance in the health care system since a majority
of the individuals refuse to take the treatment and even feel offended to take it. Therefore, a
series of holistic approaches remain unsuccessful (Weller, 2012).
3. five dimensions of the well-functioning health care system are including the improved
health of individuals, defending the population from health disease, protecting from financial
consequences of ill health, providing patient-centric care, providing effective care with
emotional well being.
Part 2:
1. The benefit of conflict suggested by the author is team uses effort to manage a conflict and
conflict enhances the sense of collaboration, interpersonal interaction. Moreover, it has an
effect on performance, creativity, innovation and potential positive outcome (Kalishman et
al., 2012).
Activity 2
1. The multidisciplinary teams communicate with each other about the fact and diseases and
the severity of the disease along with the health conditions of the patient determines the
members of the multidisciplinary team (Brown & Sherman, 2015).
2. The specialist and the neuropsychologists lead the multidisciplinary team.
3. A multidisciplinary team usually care for people with the long-term motor neurological
disease. Therefore, the main members of multidisciplinary disease are a general physician
who identifies disease first then the specialist who identify the core of the disease in the
specific clinical area. In this case, the main member will be the neurologist and occupational
therapist.

Case study 4:
1. The key issue is exceptional confrontational. On a busy rehabilitation unit, the
physiotherapy representative was absent due to the lack of bonding within a team member.
Moreover, that team member failed to deliver smooth care to the patient and update to the
patient. Therefore, it has a huge effect on the multidisciplinary team and patient outcome
(Pillay et al., 2015).
2. Here, a key issue is the lack of bonding between key members of the physiotherapist. Here,
physiotherapist failed to make bonding in the team and therefore absent on busy days. As a
team leader, the most powerful strategy will be building up the strong bonding between
physiotherapist and other members of the team. Bonding can be made by interpersonal
communication, informal outing, the frequent session where every member will point out
their area of concern and share their personal experience with each other (Pillay et al.,
2015).Since physiotherapist was failed to serve the patient properly by not giving the smooth
update to a patient and patient-centric care. Therefore, providing information about the
importance of patient and providing training about therapeutic communication and building
proper feedback communication will help the physiotherapist to cope up with current stress
without disrupting the quality of life (Pillay et al., 2015).
Activity 1
1. The other questions that are required to be asked to the nurse during the clinical handover
apart from the patient details that has been already presented includes the presenting the
complaint of the patient. There should be a presentation of the any relevant details that needs
to be conveyed. The information needs to be clear and succinct and should be sufficient to

answer the questions of the other nurses who are oncoming to provide care. This should
include details like what was the condition of the patient before he was handed over from the
Emergency Department. Apart from the medication list, other treatments also needs to be
mentioned like what diagnostic tests have been conducted on him like any X rays or USG or
anything of this sort. There should also be a mention of the results which are awaiting and
needs to be assessed. Mention of allergies, family dynamics or phobias all needs to be
mentioned. A proper handover should also mention the plans for the future related to the
health condition of the patient. This needs to include the direction the treatment procedure is
heading towards. Additionally this should mention the task that needs to be handed on to the
next nurse, without which provision of care to the patient will not be efficient and effective
(Anderson et al., 2015).
2. On arriving to the ward, the nurse in charge might conduct a PQRST in order to access the
rate of pain that the patient is suffering from. The PQRST mnemonic for a complete pain
history is as follows:
 P3 – Positional, palliating, and provoking factors
 Q – Quality
 R3 – Region, radiation, referral
 S – Severity
 T3 – Temporal factors (time and mode of onset, progression, previous episodes)
(Naidu & Pham, 2015)
This assessment helps to understand and ensure the thorough patient history through
following the steps of the above plan properly. This framework allows the healthcare
professionals to ask the patient to feel the pain that is where it is located, to understand the

character of the pain like what kind of pain it is, when and how it began like the onset of the
pain. It also involves the understanding that how bad the pain is that is the intensity of the
pain. This is where else they feel it, what makes it worse or better, how it has changed over
time, and whether they have ever had it before.
Module 4:
Activity 1:
Nursing competency and decision making is one of the important nursing skill that
allows a nurse to critically analyze a clinical problem and make effective decision in order to
address the problem in an effective manner. Hence, it is important for a nurse to understand
the way of developing competency and decision making skill in order to transit from student
to registered nurse (Ingham-Broomfield, 2015). In this regards different Benner’s stage of
clinical competence and NMBA competencies and decision making tools are effective to
evaluate my competency and decision making skill. According to the NMBA decision
making tool the primary motivation of decision of a registered nurse to involve in care
activity should be to identify the health requirements of the client, in this regards I would like
to develop my nursing care and diagnosis skill and as it is important to be accountable for
making decision I would like to partnership with the client to select the person that is most
appropriate to perform the care activities (nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2018). In addition I
would like to involve in collaborative or interprofessional skill as it helps to made most
effective decisions. In this regards I would like to develop my communication skill so that I
could communicate with the other team members to access collaboration (Matziou et al.,
2014). Further, I would like to evaluate my competency level by using Benner’s stage of
clinical competence and rate my skills to evaluate how much improve I need to become an

expert (Ingham-Broomfield, 2015). Such skill development would help my transition to
registered nurse from student nurse.
Activity 4:
The give scenario is associated with 22 patients from which 14 patients have undergone
surgery. 8 patients are under regular care and out of them 4 patients have intravenous access.
Except me there are another register nurse who is also playing the role of nurse unit manager
and 1 enrolled nurse and 3 AINs. I this regards I would like to use the team nursing approach
to provide adequate care to the patients and achieve positive health outcomes (Dang &
Dearholt, 2017). Being a NUM it is the responsibility of that registered nurse should be to
supervise the care process of 22 patients. In this case the surgical patients need more critical
care as compared to other 8 patients and a registered nurse poses the ability to take care of
such patients and they trained in an effective manner to provide sufficient care to post-
operative patients. Thus, being a registered nurse I would like to take care of 14 nurse with
the help of another registered nurse who is playing the role of NUM (Smolowitz et al., 2015).
Enrolled nurse will be appointed to take care of the patients that have intravenous access for
antibiotics as an enrolled nurse is competent enough to take care of such patients. Further, I
would like to appoint the AINs to assist the enrolled nurse and take care of the patients that
are under usual care and do not need special care ((Swan et al., 2015)). Such team nursing
would help to provide adequate care to each patients in the ward and achieve a successful
team outcome.

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132-142. Please read this article and answer the following