Knowing where you fit in with the team.
Ralph Hogaboom / Flickr
As a new nurse I was entranced with my role. Throughout my schooling, I had worked closely with nurses and nursing instructors I admired, but out in the real world I was only beginning to understand how I fit in with the rest of the team. From those early years, I vividly remember two separate run-ins I had with nurse aides. I was so frustrated that they didn’t simply follow my instructions! Looking back, I think these disagreements were mostly about experienced workers “testing” me and our working relationship.
Delegation is not simple.
In “Delegating as a New Nurse” (free until January 10) in this month’s AJN, Amanda Anderson offers a wealth of practical information to help new and not-so-new nurses learn the art of delegation. I could have used her guidance back then. As she notes, delegation is not a “simple” task:
“It requires an appreciation of nuance and insight, both of which new graduates may lack. Delegation often requires skills that aren’t taught in nursing school and are difficult for preceptors to teach in the clinical setting.”
The ‘five rights of delegation.’
In this article, Anderson describes the National Council of State Boards of Nursing “Five Rights of Delegation,” along with tips on knowing when to delegate and to whom, and how to make your expectations clear. She emphasizes that successful delegation is done with respect, includes encouragement along the way, and ends with gratitude and praise.
Sometimes, do it yourself.
Anderson also reminds us that just because non-nurses can handle routine care like answering call lights or bathing a patient doesn’t mean that these tasks should always be delegated to others. If we always delegate what others can do,
“ . . . RNs risk becoming removed from the intimate physicality of our jobs and miss out on the way these responsibilities sharpen our assessment skills and help us to prevent emergencies if we are always on the sidelines.”
But read the entire article, and let us know your tips for navigating this sometimes tricky area.
I want this article require reading for every person who has ever said, “My hospital says I have to get a BSN after ten years of practice or lose my job. Those stupid BSN classes about leadership, I didn’t ever learn anything. Those kids think they’ll graduate from nursing school and be charge nurses right away.” Well, folks, those leadership classes teach team roles and delegation in exactly the same way they teach wound care and physical assessment– enough to let students in a clinical placement know how much they have to learn about them when they enter practice. Maybe they’ll be better at it as new grads than you were when YOU were a new grad, because they learned something about it first rather than total OJT. So … another under-appreciated reason for BSN to be the entry into practice standard, like for, oh, chemists, engineers, the Forest Service …