Date of Award

5-2024

Document Type

Dissertation - Campus Access Only

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice

Degree Discipline

Nursing

Abstract

Primary care practices utilize advanced-practice registered nurses (APRNs) to deliver high-quality, cost-effective care and address the growing patient demand. Unlicensed assistive personnel (UAP) are low-cost additions to primary care teams. APRNs are leaders and delegate many tasks to UAPs in busy primary care clinics. Delegation is an essential, complex nursing skill that APRNs use to improve workflows. The Texas Board of Nursing (BON) governs the Practice of all nurses, and APRNs must know and understand the established rules and standards to delegate efficiently and effectively.

This Doctor of Nursing Practice project aimed to identify APRNs’ knowledge and Practice of medication administration delegation to UAP according to a rule stipulated by the Texas BON. A three-component survey was developed in Qualtrics to assess APRNs’ practices, knowledge of the delegation rule, and demographic information. Permission was obtained to place a survey link on the Facebook page of the North Harris Montgomery Advanced Practice Nurse Society to invite APRNs who were members of the society to participate. The collected data were downloaded in an Excel file from Qualtrics and analyzed using the Intellectus program. The results were presented in tables as frequencies and percentages.

Of the 33 respondents, approximately 33% answered that a physician was always present in their clinic, and 33% said they consistently delegate medication to UAP. Forty-eight percent of the respondents answered that APRNs could delegate medications to the medical assistants, which is incorrect according to the Texas BON, and approximately 73% incorrectly answered that the physician does not have to be present in the clinic when APRNs delegate medication administration to UAP. The study’s outcome, though limited by sample size, indicates a need to improve the APRNs’ Practice by improving their knowledge of the delegation rule established by Texas BON. Further studies with larger sample sizes are essential to establish the need for changes to the initial APRN education and develop a framework for APRN staff development that includes knowledge of the delegation rule to support a change in Practice.

Committee Chair/Advisor

Vivian Dawkins

Committee Member

Sharisse Hebert

Committee Member

Chloe Gaines

Committee Member

Ruby A. Benjamin-Garner

Publisher

Prairie View A&M University

Rights

© 2021 Prairie View A & M University

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Date of Digitization

11/22/2024

Contributing Institution

John B Coleman Library

City of Publication

Prairie View

MIME Type

Application/PDF

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