Editing Nursing Skills and Procedures (section)

=== Delegation and scope ===
Assistive personnel may perform standardized tasks with predictable outcomes on stable patients, such as vital signs, hygiene, ambulation, feeding a patient without swallowing risk, emptying a drainage bag and reporting the volume, and specimen collection from a voided sample. Assistive personnel do not assess, teach, evaluate, or perform sterile procedures. Licensed practical and vocational nurses perform most established skills, administer most routine medications, and reinforce teaching the registered nurse initiated. The registered nurse retains initial assessment, care planning, initial teaching, evaluation of outcomes, and care of the unstable patient, and in most jurisdictions retains intravenous push medications, blood product administration, and central line management. State nurse practice acts vary, and exam answers follow the most restrictive common standard.