Registered nurses (RNs) continue to complete non-nursing tasks because of a lack of sufficient ancillary personnel and organizational role deficiencies in the healthcare system. Nursing work’s actual meaning is misunderstood because RNs lack an appropriate lexicon to define their specific roles (Grosso et al., 2019). Non-nursing tasks imply performing medical care functions outside the treatment role, including administrative activities, which separate nurses from patients. RNs perform non-nursing jobs to extend their obligation to offer more services to patients, to meet understaffed nursing issues, and because of the poor structuring of roles in healthcare.
Role overlapping among RNs reflects a change in health systems. In particular, the challenging economic situations have contributed to more complex and costly medical facilities. In response, physicians are also redefining their roles to more challenging and demanding ones. The cost of education is also rising, making access to healthcare courses more challenging. Consequently, the number of employed RNs does not match the increasing demand for treatment care services (Grosso et al., 2019). RNs also perform risky jobs that expose them to contaminable diseases such as COVID-19 which claimed several hospital workers’ lives, ultimately affecting staffing levels. In response, existing nurses shift their roles to non-nursing ones to meet patient demands.
Registered nurses are not reluctant to delegate non-nursing tasks to ancillary personnel but are compelled by insufficient support personnel. The work experience is not appropriate for substituting formal education and training as most of these tasks require fewer skills. An experienced RN can identify the skill gap due to job dissatisfaction. Overall, there is a need to restructure the healthcare roles to avoid nursing overload and provide education costs to healthcare courses to meet the current staffing needs.
Reference
Grosso, S., Tonet, S., Bernard, I., Corso, J., De Marchi, D., Dorigo, L., Funes, G., Lussu. M., Oppio, N., Mori, D. P., & Palese, A. (2019). Non‐nursing tasks as experienced by nurses: A descriptive qualitative study. International Nursing Review, 66(2), 259-268.