Purpose: The purposes of the study were to investigate degree of delegation of nursing activities in long-term care hospitals and to examine whether the degree of delegation was associated with nurses’ education about delegation, existence of delegation policy in facilities, and nurse-to-patient ratio in facilities.
Methods: Data were collected from 170 nurses working in 9 long-term care hospitals located in Daegu city and Gyeongbuk province from July to October 2016. Structured questionnaire was developed and used to assess the degree of delegation for 119 nursing activities in 14 categories of nursing tasks in long-term care hospitals and nurses’ understanding of delegation on each nursing activity. Data were analyzed using t-test, ANOVA, Mann-whitney U test, Kruskal-wallis test, Pearson correlation coefficients, and Spearmans rho correlation coefficient analysis.
Results: The degree of delegation of nursing activity ranged from 27.8 to 94.6 for delegable nursing activities and from 0.2 to 49.3 for non-delegable nursing activities, based on 0-100 point. Nurses who had education on delegation reported significantly lower degree of delegation to nurse assistants on safety/emergency and medication tasks and those who had institutional policies on delegation performed significantly lower degree of delegation on infection and medication tasks. There was significantly positive association between the degree of nursing delegation and nurse-to-patient ratio.
Conclusion: In order to perform proper nursing delegation in long-term care hospitals, it is important to develope standardized protocols and provide education on nursing delegation. Adequate level of nurse staffing ratio is essential to implement proper nursing delegation in long-term care facilities.