Developing Delegation Skills

With the current global shortage of qualified nurses, there is often a need to delegate tasks to practitioners who may have less knowledge and experience than is ideal. So how can this be done safely and what are the benefits of delegation?

There is no doubt that with an overstretched workforce, delegation skills are needed. At its worst delegation can be used as a form of abdication, but at its best delegation can provide enormous benefits resulting from the optimum use of human resources (Wheeler 2001).

What Does it Mean to Delegate?

Gillen and Graffin (2010) suggest that several definitions of delegation can be found within the nursing literature, but they all share the same emphasis - that even though the work is done by a junior member of staff, the accountability and responsibility remain with the delegator who needs to be sure that the work is assigned appropriately.

As the Royal College of Nursing (2020) clearly states, nurses must be accountable for their decisions to delegate tasks and duties to other people. For the delegating nurse, this means:

• You must establish that anyone you delegate to can carry out your instructions.
• You must confirm that the outcome of any delegated task meets the required standards.
• You must make sure that everyone you are responsible for is supervised and supported.