III Glossary
Accountability: Being answerable to oneself and others for one’s own choices, decisions, and actions as measured against a standard.
Assignment: Routine care, activities, and procedures that are within the authorized scope of practice of the RN, LPN/VN, or routine functions of the assistive personnel.
Assistive Personnel (AP): Certified nursing assistants (CNA), client care technicians (PCT), certified medical assistants (CMA), certified medication aides, and home health aides.
Closed-loop communication: A process that enables the person giving the instructions to hear what they said reflected back and to confirm that their message was, in fact, received correctly.
Constructive feedback: Supportive feedback that offers solutions to areas of weakness.
Delegatee: An RN, LPN/VN, or AP who is delegated a nursing responsibility by either an APRN, RN, or LPN/VN (where the state’s Nurse Practice Act allows), is competent to perform the task, and verbally accepts the responsibility.
Delegation: Allowing a delegatee to perform a specific nursing activity, skill, or procedure that is beyond the delegatee’s traditional role and not routinely performed.
Delegator: Allowing a delegatee to perform a specific nursing activity, skill, or procedure that is beyond the delegatee’s traditional role and not routinely performed. This definition of delegation applies to licensed nurses as well as to assistive personnel.
Five rights of delegation: Right task, right circumstance, right person, right directions and communication, and right supervision and evaluation.
Nursing team members: Advanced practice registered nurses (APRN), registered nurses (RN), licensed practical/vocational nurses (LPN/VN), and assistive personnel (AP).
Scope of practice: Procedures, actions, and processes that a health care practitioner is permitted to undertake in keeping with the terms of their professional license.
Supervision: Appropriate monitoring of the delegated activity, evaluation of client outcomes, and follow up with the delegatee at the completion of the activity.
Titrate: To adjust to obtain a desired therapeutic outcome.