A hospital can only be considered an ideal treatment center when it has a fully functional and active emergency department. Vaart et al. (2011) believe that emergency medical care services are the most visible part of the health care system. However, in most hospitals, this department faces failures due to limited access to care and overcrowding of patients. Vaart et al. (2011) note that this problem has its root in the rising demand for emergency services and the dropping number of emergency workers.
Before deciding to delegate, it is important to know what tasks can be delegated. Barrow and Sharma (2018) believe that organizations have different rules and procedures regarding delegation. According to Abdulwahid et al. (2018), emergency doctors perform diagnosis roles, administrative work, liaison, teaching, managing complex cases, and supervision. They spent so much time in face-to-face contact with patients, developing relationships, maintaining their knowledge base, and gathering information.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Among these tasks, administrative activities can be delegated to the nurses because they do not require much skill. According to Abdulwahid et al. (2018), administrative work may take up to a fifth of the doctor’s time. Administrative activities can be defined as any activity that is not directly or indirectly related to patient care (Abdulwahid et al., 2018). It includes tasks such as bed allocation, employment issues, paperwork, phone calls, and handling other departmental problems. Another task that can be delegated is documentation. Abdulwahid et al. (2018) note that documentation may take up to 20% of emergency doctors’ time. It entails the recording of patients’ information on paper or the computer.
I will delegate administrative work to two nurses who have worked for the ER long enough to understand how the department is run, its functions, and its services. Administrative work cannot be done on intuition. The chosen nurses have the necessary knowledge for the management of human, financial, and material resources. They will be responsible for the daily running of the department, preparation of the hospital legislation and planning, and application of hospital legislation (Siddiqui, 2016). They need to have the ability to plan, willingness to take risks, a sense of equity and fairness, the ability to coordinate, and good personal motivation (Siddiqui, 2016). The two nurses will work together, each handling half of the department. The rooms in the ER department will be divided equally between them. They will be required to inform the department of the resources available and those required for its smooth running since a patient’s time in the ER is spent using a resource or waiting for a resource (Vaart et al., 2011).
Documentation is one of the most vital aspects of health provision. According to Lorenzetti et al. (2018), proper documentation reduces treatment errors, facilitates care provision, and informs health system resource allocation and planning. This task will be delegated to four nurses due to the accuracy required and the workload involved. The nurses will be required to record all patient information on the computers. They will need to get in touch with other ER workers to get the paperwork before they can record the information on the computers.
Before beginning their duties, the nurses will be given the necessary information and trained for a while to understand what is required of them in their different stations. I will personally supervise them. According to Barrow and Sharma (2018), proper supervision is necessary for all delegation situations. The circumstance is right for delegation since all the nurses have experience working in the ER. I will personally direct and communicate to them about their duties.
References
Abdulwahid, M. A., Booth, A., Turner, J., & Mason, S. M. (2018). Understanding better how emergency doctors work. Analysis of distribution of time and activities of emergency doctors: a systematic review and critical appraisal of time and motion studies. Emergency Medicine Journal , 35 (11), 692-700.
Barrow, J. M., & Sharma, S. (2018). Nursing Five Rights of Delegation.
Lorenzetti, D. L., Quan, H., Lucyk, K., Cunningham, C., Hennessy, D., Jiang, J., & Beck, C. A. (2018). Strategies for improving physician documentation in the emergency department: a systematic review. BMC emergency medicine , 18 (1), 1-12.
Siddiqui, M. I. (2016). Hospital Administration. Retrieved on 16 th June from https://www.researchagte.net
Van der Vaart, T., Vastag, G., & Wijngaard, J. (2011). Facets of operational performance in an emergency room (ER). International Journal of Production Economics , 133 (1), 201-211.