Please clarify delegation question!

[stumillardkm]

i take the nclex-rn on thursday june 26th and have seen posts by people about knowing prioritization and delegation material.

my dilemma - i am studying from saunders' 4th edition and it says that assistive or unlicensed personnel cannot do any invasive procedures - they are basically limited to ambulating, bed bath, etc... when i took an ati online practice test, a question it gave was which task could the rn delegate the ap (assistant personnel/or unlicensed personnel) do - and my options were something like: a) assess patient before and after med admin. b) teach client about monitoring glucose levels (or some other teaching aspect) c) perform venipuncture and collect blood d) do assessment on newly admitted pt.

and the answer it gave was the venipuncture!! none of the answers seemed correct, but yet it gave the invasive procedure as the 'correct' one, but gave no rationale!!

can someone, maybe suzanne, please clarify what the limitations are for the various people - ap, lpn, and rn - and possibly give citing documentation for the definitive answer or what the nclex people use as their source for the "correct" answers on stuff like this???

thank you!

[suzanne4, RN]

Venipuncture would be the correct and only answer from the choices that you gave.

Reasons why and then it will seem quite simple to you:

Assessment after medication administration should be done by the person that gave the medication, as they should be aware of the side effects of the med as well, it is never the responsibility of an unlicensed person to do this.

Patient teaching is to be done by the RN, not the nursing asst. Sure, they can perform the procedure in some facilities, but the teaching is to be done by the nurse.

Assessment is always done by the RN once per shift, it is never left for the inlicensed staff to do. And it needs to be documented by the RN as well.

The only thing that is left is the venipuncture and this is actually done by non-licensed personnel in most facilities. It does not require an RN or nurse to perform.

Hope that this helps.

[BebobthefrogFNP]

In another thread, one person posted not to delegate tasks that you eat:

Evaluate

Assess

Teach