Question about delegation

[j_tay1981]

My last shift was pretty intense. OK, it sucked :-)

My patients were busy, but I was also helping other nurses when their patients be alarms would go off (one patient was up every 15 min and our hospital wouldn't give us a sitter!). I was also helping my car tech get some patients cleaned up or to the toilets. He was busy, I was busy, etc.

Anyways, I got behind in my charting and got the scheduling and administration of some meds off for two of my patients. I'm also not thrilled with my charting, and hope it is complete. Frankly, the whole day and even now two days later I feel sick about it. I've been a nurse since 09/2012, and it has been rough for me, though I've had a string of freshly good days.

I'm thinking back on how I worked to see what I did to mess this up, and the one common denominator is dropping everything to help my tech with his duties. I'm NOT BLAMING anyone; as an RN, the buck stops with me. But I couldn't let the other nurses' patient fall and our tech was swamped with our group of patients.

What all this background is leading to is this: as an RN I want to work with my techs, but would I have been right in turning down some of the tech's requests for aid in his job? A lot of this is certainly my fault and I feel pretty ashamed by my poor performance, but alleviating one distraction may have assisted me in focusing on my nursing duties better (or not, I don't know).

Again, it's on me. I just want advice on whether or not a faux pas would be committed if I denied my tech help (even if the patients were also mine).

Thanks.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

Keep this in mind. . .you can help the CNA/tech with all of his tasks because everything he does is within your scope of practice.

However, the CNA/tech cannot help you with every single one of your tasks because a great deal of what you do is outside his scope of practice.

So you do have the right to refuse to help the tech. However, how many minutes would it have realistically taken to help him pull up an obese patient in bed or assist with a transfer?

Over the years I've noticed that the CNAs/techs usually get to leave on time or no more than 30 minutes after the end of the shift, whereas the swamped nurse stays behind more than one hour past the end of the shift.

[BrandonLPN, LPN]

If there's more than one aide on the floor and I'm busy with my work, I'll politely request they ask one of the other aides to help them. If your aides see that you help out when you can, they will be understanding when you can't. And if they *still* have an attitude about it, well, who cares?