5 Rights of Delegation in Nursing

5 rights of delegation

Delegation is making sure that the correct person is suited for the proper task.

Working in the medical industry has some solutions that are usually going to work out the same way, but sometimes, that’s not the case at all.

Delegation is all about realizing the strengths and weaknesses of the other nurses who work at the hospital.

Some nurses are much better at certain tasks than other ones which can establish roles that they’re suited for.

In the 5 rights of delegation, there is a person for the:

  1. right task
  2. right circumstance
  3. right person
  4. right direction or communication
  5. right supervision or feedback.

Here is an informative video for you to watch about the 5 rights of delegation.

Video made by: That Nursing Prof

After watching the video, I recommend you to keep on reading because we’ve gathered more in-depth information about the 5 rights of delegation examples, for example.

Though being a nurse requires medical attention and requires those with the proper authority to know what they’re doing, it’s just like any other job that requires leaders to step up.

Everyone is going to have affinities to certain tasks since that’s what makes a team.

Sometimes, they learn about these strengths in other parts of their life and they decide to work on them so that they’re able to take it to the professional level.

Nurses are taught about this, but it’s hard to know how to apply this to the workplace until you actually do training.

Real experience is often the best teacher for how these nurses are going to actually be on the job. There are going to be tasks that nurses are educated in that process.

It’s best to evaluate every situation before making life-altering procedures on them.

Different patients have different needs and different nurses are better and worse at providing those needs.

Typically the nurses will have to discuss this before they actually work on someone.

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The 5 Rights of Delegation in Nursing

What is delegation in nursing?

Delegation is using a nurse’s authority in order to properly divide their resources to take care of patients.

Everyone is different in terms of the skills and responsibilities of the people that they work with.

See also: Responsibility of a Nurse

Delegation is a way of using the resources of staff in the most optimal way possible.

Different patients are at different stages in their life and require more medical attention than other people.

Delegation makes sure that a majority of resources aren’t spent on people who have great immune systems and already have a high chance of surviving.

In some cases, this can actually make some of the costs that they would have to deal with lower.

See also: How Much Does Cyst Removal Cost?

When it comes to how experienced other people are at the hospital, that can also become a factor in how resources are delegated.

Knowing how to properly manage resources in a hospital can be just as important as being educated and knowing how to take care of people.

One of the more important aspects of delegation is supervision.

This is the entire fundamental belief of training.

If nurses are going to be trained to take care of patients in the future, they also need to be qualified so that they can give them advice on what to do.

See also: How Many Nurse Practitioners Can a Physician Supervise?

Supervision allows medical staff to make decisions that may override some of the professional opinions of their peers.

That kind of authority can save lives, especially if that individual has a lot more experience than the other people working there.

In an industry that’s as serious about helping people recover as the medical industry is, they need systems like this in place of emergencies.

This isn’t going to be something that nurses will be required to do every day, but they have to know how to approach this in order to help people.

5 rights of delegation in nursing

The five rights of the delegation are the right to have the right nurse for the right task, right circumstance, right person, right supervision, right communication, and supervision.

Some of the people who work in hospitals aren’t fit for every kind of stressful situation.

And the reality is, not everyone is committed to improving the lives of other people.

See also: How Can Nurses Improve Patient Outcomes?

Some of them do not have the best intentions and want to work for themselves.

They simply use the hospital’s resources to do so.

To an extent, that is always going to exist, but this system is going to make sure that the people there have a good of a chance as possible to help others.

This system also exists because not every nurse has the best idea of how to use their resources.

There are going to be times when the only option is to listen to their superiors.

Of course, nurses and other medical staff will disagree, but as things on later in their career, they may come to their senses and realize why they have those orders.

The job of any hospital is to improve the lives of the patients who are living there.

If they aren’t effective in doing that then most of the effort of the people there has been wasted.

The delegation also exists for the purpose of telling the people who work at hospitals when things are a lost cause.

Someone who has multiple bullet wounds, stabs, and won’t stop bleeding cannot be saved, therefore, it would be a waste for the people at the hospital to use most of their resources on that person.

Sometimes, only one person is going to be suited to work on a single individual and that can be the best option sometimes.

What the administrators that run the hospital should be concerned with is if they’re educated and have enough experience in that department.

See also: Interview Questions for Nursing Home Administrator

5 rights of delegation examples

One of the best ways of using delegation is having the right person for a task.

Not every nurse studies the same thing while in school, which is why nurses are interviewed for jobs and trained before they officially work.

Delegating the right person to a task is the best way to make sure that people are taken care of efficiently.

There is also the delegation of the right circumstance.

This means taking the right option when it comes to a specific scenario that nurses may have to deal with.

An example of something like a circumstance would be if there were failing organs or blocked arteries, and the nurses used the patient’s veins to provide blood.

It might be an extreme circumstance, but in a life or death situation, it’s worth trying.

Delegation exists for this purpose since we don’t always need to do that and people could get hurt if we did that unnecessarily.

Having the right task in many cases is just as important as having the right person take care of someone.

We need to know that we have the proper objective before saving someone.

See also: Objective vs Subjective Data

Finding the right task is literally just a diagnosis, everything after that is just the procedure.

For example, if someone’s body can’t sustain itself, then they need to be put on life support.

Having the right supervision could be the most important element of all in making a good hospital.

This just means making sure that the staff knows what they’re doing when taking care of a patient. The right communication is possibly the most obvious out of all of these.

Making sure that people agree on what they’re talking about is probably the most important in a hospital.

Conclusion: What are the 5 rights of delegation?

Delegation is a process that has needed to evolve in the past century.

Doing this isn’t easy, and getting the proper education isn’t the final step of being a nurse.

If it was, that would mean that machines could take up the jobs of a nurse.

See also: Will Nurses Be Replaced by Robots?

That could be great in some cases, but it’s not good for everyone who wants to help others since there is always going to be a human element of trying to optimize human life.

A machine, however advanced and precise it may be, is never going to be able to empathize with the best decision for a human.

Supervision is a big part of the delegation and is usually a defining part of most jobs.

If you have a job right now, you were probably hired to work by someone who is going to supervise what you do.

This can be really good if you have a lot of people working on a single person and even from a business perspective, you would want people to know what they’re doing.

Experience is always going to be important in the medical industry, sometimes, supervisors may value this trait over knowledge of any disease.

When it comes to saving people’s lives, doctors have optimized the process across the hundreds of thousands of years in medical practice.

However, delegation seems to be good at managing the resources of those who take care of others.

Taking care of anyone and putting their lives in your hands is a lot of pressure, but this process gives people more wiggle room and ensures that less error is going to happen.

The ego exists to protect a person’s mental state and make sure that they’re on track with their goal, but delegation makes sure that elements such as pride, don’t become a problem in the hospital.

We hope you learned a lot from our thorough article about the 5 rights to delegation.

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About Ida Koivisto, BSN, RN, PHN

Ida is both a registered nurse and public health nurse. Her passion is to provide as much valuable information about nursing to the world as possible. In her spare time from work and blogging, Ida loves to work out at the gym and spend time with relatives.