Editing Management of Care (section)

=== The three verbs that are never delegated ===

A dependable examination heuristic is that the RN never delegates '''assessment, teaching, evaluation, or nursing judgment''' to anyone, and never delegates the care of an '''unstable''' patient. If a question stem contains "assess," "teach," "evaluate," "plan," or describes a patient whose condition is changing, the answer is the RN. If the stem describes a routine, predictable task on a stable patient, an LPN or assistive personnel may be correct.

'''Application note.''' Students lose points by reasoning about who is physically capable of a task rather than who is legally accountable for it. An experienced assistive personnel may be far better at obtaining a blood pressure than a new graduate RN, and that is irrelevant. The question is who is accountable for deciding what the blood pressure means.