How do you as the charge nurse decide which patient would you assign to a new nurse?

Question

Delegating and prioritization is an imperative task in the safety and most optimal patient outcomes. What is the best way to determine this?

Answer 1

Charge nurses use delegation and prioritization in making nursing assignments, which are quite complicated! It feels like a rubric sometimes. Charge nurses should consider the experience of the new nurse, what she has seen or been exposed to in orientation. For example, if is this a really unusual case or diagnosis that she might not have seen in orientation, it would be wise to give the complicated case to a more experienced nurse. The new nurse may miss signs things in assessment that a more experienced nurse would catch, and this is critical in patient outcomes. This would be a perfect learning opportunity for the experienced nurse or charge nurse to explain the complicated case to the new nurse when time permits. Learning is a continued process! Other things to consider are what load can the new nurse reasonably handle, e.g. number of patients, or if for example one of the patients is less complicated clinically but has more emotional or psychosocial needs, it would be wise to give the new nurse less patients or at least to ensure the rest of the patients have less acuity or needs. Other things to consider are isolation status of the patients, blood transfusions required, insulin or glucose check needs, code status, sepsis scores, and admission or discharge status.