delegation made into an official paper

curiously, i have worked on this delegation assignment for about 2 weeks, really. our list of very sick sample patients is comparable to what you might actually see in the hospital. i have searched the nursing journals forwards and back looking for good reference articles, which is actually quite a chore because i haven't been able to find that one really good article that sums it up perfectly. of course, there are thousands of articles on diseases, and i really think that may be my next step in searching. my biggest problem is deciding who gets which patients. surely, it is based upon complexity of care. the rn gets the more complex patients, but not all of them at one time, either. the lpn, according to our book, can take care of the stable patients but not the complex ones?? something must be wrong with where i work then... either the charge nurses aren't dividing up the patients correctly, or the lpns have a broader scope of practice than is presented in my leadership book.

now i have to put most of this together into an apa style paper. we have to use references on why we chose each patient for a particular nurse. to me, that is the most difficult part, because i have stated above, the literature just isn't actually available with specific references. not that i have found, and i have searched long and hard for it. somehow i know i will get it finished. i don't mind having to think critically but it sure does put a lot of things into perspective. it makes me consider how they divy assignments at the hospital where i work. there are plenty of lpns who have been there a really long time who are more than capable of working with a complex patient. yet, i don't think i should base my delegation assignment on what my experience tells me, but more along the lines of just how my book states it.

off to ovid i go.... hunting and searching for the next perfect article. wish me luck!