The nurse needs to know a patient's blood glucose and asks the unlicensed assistive personnel (UAP) if she has been trained on fingersticks per facility protocol. The assistant reports she has not been officially trained at this facility, but has performed fingersticks at a previous job. What should the nurse do?

Explanation

•The nursing assistant must be trained per the facility policy.  The nurse should allow the UAP to observe the procedure and document that as part of the training. LPNs may participate in the training of assistive staff.

•Unlicensed Assistive Personnel (UAP) may assist in a variety of direct client care activities like taking vital signs, performing range-of-motion exercises, bathing, providing catheter care, bed making, and feeding patients who cannot feed themselves. 

•Tasks that may be delegated to UAP are those that are regularly recurring in the care of clients according to established steps, and have a predictable outcome. Tasks delegated to UAP may not involve ongoing assessment, interpretation, or decision-making that cannot be separated from the actual tasks.

•Though facility policy may vary, UAP may be trained to obtain urine specimens, give enemas, even and perform blood glucose tests if it's allowed at that facility.

•The nurse should not allow the UAP to perform this task until official training has been completed.

•The nurse should not assume the nursing assistant knows how to do a fingerstick correctly, nor should the nurse ask another nurse to do it.

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