Question

The nurse is working on a medical-surgical unit that is short staffed due to a callout. The manager of the unit was unable to replace the nurse, so the extra clients were assigned to the remaining nurses. The manager was able to get the help of unlicensed assistive personnel (UAP) from the house pool to help on the unit. In order for effective care to be given to the clients, the nurses would do which of the following?

A) Delegate vital signs and a.m. care to the UAP.
B) Explain to the manager that care may be compromised if another nurse does not work the shift.
C) Tell the clients their care will be sparse.
D) Assign wound care to the UAP.

Answer 1

In a scenario where a nursing unit is short staffed, nurses should delegate appropriate tasks to UAP, such as vital signs and a.m. care, to maintain patient care while focusing on complex tasks themselves.

Step-by-step explanation:

When a medical-surgical unit is short staffed, effective and efficient delegation of tasks is critical to maintaining patient care. Nurses should delegate tasks that are within the scope of practice for unlicensed assistive personnel (UAP), such as taking vital signs and assisting with activities of daily living (a.m. care). This allows the nurses to focus on more complex patient needs and ensures the UAP is utilized effectively. It is important to note that tasks requiring higher levels of skill and judgment, such as wound care, should be reserved for licensed staff. Therefore, in this scenario, the correct action would be to Delegate vital signs and a.m. care to the UAP (Option A). Communicating concerns to the manager (Option B) and informing clients about potential sparse care (Option C) are secondary actions that may be appropriate, but the immediate solution for distributing workload effectively remains with delegation to UAP. Assigning wound care to UAP (Option D) is not appropriate as they are not licensed to perform such tasks.