Delegation in Nursing

Delegation is absolutely essential to being a "good" leader. Any run-of-the-mill manager can pass out assignments and demand compliance. The military is chock full of those types, achieving short term results but at the expense of crew morale, motivation, and initiative. While believing they're "delegating", they're in fact setting themselves up to become the only one left who'll do anything, or do anything well. These types of supervisors don't lead, they push. So, proper use of delegation by a good leader is much more than the assigning of various tasks.

The article by Hudson (2008) offers a wealth of information correlating the skill of delegation with nursing leadership. In summary, he points out the following benefits in which delegation helps achieve the goals of effective leadership:

- Improve staff satisfaction by showing trust and faith in their skills and abilities.

- Improve unit responsiveness by increasing the knowledge levels of subordinates.

- A method for dealing with narrowing time constraints and increased management workloads.

- Improve efficiency by giving subordinates the requisite authority to take action without obtaining prior approval, and recognition that there is some risk involved.

- Increases the nurses' scope of duty by giving nurses the responsibility and authority to perform a task that is normally a part of the nurse manager's responsibility.

- Improving professional development by preparing subordinates to fill higher positions, develop nurses' leadership skills, improving their decision-making abilities.

- Requires the nurse to develop detailed knowledge of their subordinates which is needed to safely match the skill set of the subordinate with the assignment.

- Shows the limits of delegation -- that not everything can be delegated.

Southby (2003) addresses the responsibilities of leadership in regard to ethics when using delegation by stating "Care must be taken to use this authority only to fulfill responsibilities and not to exploit or degrade subordinates" (p. 682). She also goes on to say that subordinates must be encouraged to look at options and to consider ethical implications (Southby, 2003). She ties delegation with the responsibility of nurses to "develop and sustain the ethical climate" (p. 683).

Thus, the effective use of delegation is not just a component of leadership, it is the essence of leadership.