Registered Nurses Have The Responsibility

The American Nurse Association defines delegation as “the transfer of responsibility for the performance of an activity from one individual to another while retaining accountability for the outcome” (Cherry, 2011). Delegation is an essential tool used by the registered nurse to routinely distribute responsibility and allow them to effectively complete more tasks during their daily routine. With this shared responsibility comes accountability for the registered nurse to know how, when and to whom he or she must appropriately distribute these tasks. To safely delegate patient care, the registered nurse must follow his or her own state

Registered nurses work alongside physicians providing patient care in a variety of ways. A few examples of what nurses are responsible for include: administering medications, tracking patient’s vital signs, helping to diagnose and properly treat patient aliments and educating the patient and their family on their condition and the course of treatment. Depending on what area of medicine a nurse works in will determine more generalized and specific duties and responsibilities. There are many different areas a nurse may work in. Some areas include: obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, emergency room, and many more. Nurses can work in a variety of settings, these can include: hospitals, urgent cares, doctors office, nursing homes and home health.

The General Duty of most Registered Nurses’ is to do whatever they can, in their power, to help every patient they come across on a daily basis in a comfortable, appropriate, manner. On the more specific end of a RNs’ duty, a Registered Nurse is expected to and responsible for: performing physical exams and health

Registered Nurse tasks include administrating, advising, and assessing patients. They administer nursing care to the ill, injured, convalescent, or disabled. They also advise patients on health care and how to prevent diseases or provide case management. Lastly, they assess patient health

What does it mean be a registered nurse? To some, it may be someone who goes and fetches a cup of water or a cup of coffee. Perhaps it is someone who just provides the patient with warm blanket and a pat on the head; or just maybe someone who delivers medications to the patients. A registered nurse (RN) may provide those services, but there is much more behind the scenes of planning that the patient may not realize. A RN is also responsible for the proper delegation of care to the patients under his/her care with the appropriate staff that is suited for such tasks. For example, a RN may delegate the CENA’s (Competency Evaluated Nurse Aides) to take vitals on a patient while the LPN/LVN

Nurses make up the largest clinical group in a hospital setting making them prone to cost containment by reducing their numbers. Appropriate staffing optimizes care and there is a need to create dynamics that provide proper staffing solutions. This way the health care sector will adapt to the evolving nature and need for populations that are constantly rising and in need of care. This is essential in preventing harm, providing appropriate care as needed, and saving lives. Legislations such as The Registered Nurse Staffing Act have been enacted to make sure that hospitals have adequate numbers of licensed registered nurses that provide effective medical care required by patients. Nurses have a responsibility in maintain, defining, and implementing standards of their professional practice (American Nurse Association, 2012). They should embrace mechanisms that provide adequate and flexible staffing to protect themselves and their patients from inappropriate delegation of tasks and

Nursing shortages in the United States have left practicing registered nurses (RNs) with strenuous workloads. Such heavy workloads can lead to poor patient outcomes, decreased satisfaction among both patients and nurses, and questionable quality of care, among other things (Cimiotti, Akien, Sloane, & Wu, 2012; Department for Professional Employees, 2014; Duffield et al., 2011). Realizing the potential for error that accompanies such circumstances, efforts are being made to decrease the workload of nurses in hopes of improving quality of care. One such effort, and the focus of this paper, is the implementation of mandated nursing staff ratios. Mandated nursing staff ratios would restrict the number of patients a nurse is allowed to care for at one time (Tevington, 2011). While this idea seems to be a fitting solution, there has been much debate about the effectiveness of mandated nursing staff ratios. This paper will discuss arguments for mandated nursing staff ratios, arguments against mandated nursing staff ratios, and the impact of mandated nursing staff ratios on the profession of nursing as a whole.

Nurses make up the single largest health profession in the U.S. Nurses perform many different patient care task and deliver critical health care services in many different settings, including hospitals, nursing homes, ambulatory care clinics, hospice, home health care and public health facilities. The distinction among the different types of nursing reflects education, role and medical background. Registered nurses have different levels of educational degrees. Every graduate nurse must pass the national exam, The NCLEX-RN, before they are licensed to practice. Registered nurses provide direct care services at many different levels, such as designing a plan of care for individual patients, educating patients on disease process and prevention, administering treatment and promoting health for patients, families and communities

Nurses play important role in the financial performance of their organizations since they have direct patient contact. The financial cost attributed to an organization for losing a single nurse is estimated to be equivalent to twice the annual salary of the nurse. To put it in monetary terms, the average hospital is estimated to lose about $300,000 per year for each percentage increase in annual nurse turnover (Hunt, 2009). Losing these nurses not only affects the finances of the healthcare organizations, but also the excellence of care provided to patients’. Nursing turnover decreases the patient care quality by increasing the length of stay at hospitals and increased incidence of illnesses acquired at hospitals. In situations like these, some healthcare organizations have reported having to turn away patient to other healthcare facilities due to lack of available staff (Hunt, 2009).

In recent years, the healthcare industry has seen a significant decline in the quality of patient care it provides. This has been the result of reduced staffing levels, overworked nurses, and an extremely high nurse to patient ratio. The importance of nurse staffing in hospital settings is an issue of great controversy. Too much staff results in costs that are too great for the facility to bear, but too little staffing results in patient care that is greatly hindered. Moreover, the shaky economy has led to widespread budget cuts; this, combined with the financial pressures associated with Medicare and private insurance companies have forced facilities to make due with fewer

Working in health care is connected with a higher degree of stress than working in other professions. Nursing includes both non-specific stress and specific factors. Many hospital are experiencing increase patient workload. Changing Registered Nurse (RN) to patient ratios are affecting both nurses' job satisfaction and patient satisfaction alike. As healthcare reform pressures hospitals to cut costs and nursing shortage continues, increased patient loads are becoming a stressor in the acute care setting. RNs suffer as they feel the stress of needing to be in multiple places at one time, an unrealistic goal, while patients suffer as they see their primary nurse less often as desired, usually during times of medication or treatment administration.

Mandatory staffing has been a major problem across the nation for many years. As a result, of such practices, nurses are over worked, and therefore, patients lives are at risk. For example, working in the emergency room (ER), the patient ratio sometimes are 26 patients to one nurse. As a result of such practice, nurse licenses

The answer to the question of “What does a registered nurse really do?” is so broad in scope that it becomes difficult to explain effectively with one statement. With many specialty fields of nursing falling under the same general definition, a core set of roles and responsibilities is used to define this answer. The Bureau of Labor and

It is the hospital and health care organization’s duty to ensure a safe environment for nurses to practice nursing care, ensuring there is a sufficient amount of staffing levels, including administrative staff who can reduce the workload burden of registered nurses and promote the ability to retain nurses within the organization (Stuart, Jarvis, Daniel, 2008). It is understood the reason why hospitals and healthcare organizations are reducing or terminating non-licensed practitioners, as a way to financially control their budget. However, these current changes are negatively affecting health care delivery, potentially causing bigger financial losses due to negative outcomes, as organizations like Medicare and Medicaid are not reimbursing hospitals for hospital-acquired complications such as bedsores, hospital-acquired pneumonia and other comorbidities. These negative outcomes also

When I first began the program I believed that the role of the registered nurse was to care for the patient’s grievances, which was limited to the physical aspect of patient care. I thought that nurses would simply be following orders based on the doctor’s orders. I quickly learned throughout the semester this was a great misrepresentation of the roles of the registered nurse. Throughout this semester, I learned that registered nurses work based off of their own assessment and diagnosis, and they work to improve all aspects of patient care. I learned that the registered nurse was not limited to one role, and that the registered nurse would be working to improve herself in all aspects of practice.