Charge Nurse Case Study

1) First of all as a nurse after going through nursing school we ought to have a better judgement. The utmost goal in the healthcare system is to put the patients’ needs as a priority, which is trying to limit all or most possible adverse effects that are prone to jeopardizing or deteriorating the patients’ health. In this scenario, the charge nurse used a bad judgement of not even considering the importance of listening to reports before making patient assignments for the shifts. The nurse has violated principles of delegation, such as: Right Person and Right Task: The charge nurse did not consider the unlicensed staff’s skills and abilities before delegating tasks to him/her. The charge nurse ought to do a thorough assessment of the individual personnel on her floor to help guide her in making decisions that pertained to patient care. Just randomly assigning tasks to personnel even when they clearly mention that they cannot perform the assigned task due to lack of experience or acquired skills could cause more harm than good for everyone involved. In addition, it was a responsibility for the charge nurse to follow the rules and regulations of her state or agency’s policies when delegating tasks or performing any actions on a patient.

Another violated principle would be the Right Circumstances: the fact that the charge nurse just picked out room to make assignments according to the licensed staff means that she really did not care what delegations were to be addressed based on patients’ needs nor did she care about what the end goal of the patients not assigned to her would be in the future.

The charge nurse has to have the ability to discern the competency of each staff and know to what extend she could invigilate/supervise a particular staff. According to Wise 2011, “Better delegation skills can help nurses be more effective in capitalizing on the availability of quality nursing care,” (p.

530).

2) If I was working with this nurse I would have first tried to clarify the mistakes and the casual approach she was displaying on the floor being in charge of the patients. If the things did not work out, which is most likely as the rude behavior of the nurse is evident from the complaints I would opt for doing the best possible treatment that was required for the patient. As the casual approach that has been taken by the charge nurse would have put the patients at risk and I being a nurse would have taken the best measure that would be beneficial for the patients.

References
Wise, P. (2011). Leading and managing in nursing (5th ed.). St. Louis, Mo.: Elsevier Mosby.