Competency-Based Assessments

Consider a nurse who is working on a busy medical-surgical unit. One evening she cares for a very sick patient who needs to be transferred to the ICU; however, there are no beds available in the ICU. While the transfer center tries to arrange for transfer to another facility with available ICU beds, the nurse must do her best to give the patient the care they need without having the resources available to do so. Eventually, the transfer center finds a facility that can provide the patient with the required level of care, but the patient dies while the ambulance is on the way to pick them up from the nurse’s hospital. The family is at the bedside, angry, in shock, and devastated. Put yourself in this nurse’s shoes and use this moral distress tool developed by the AACN to describe the experience in a brief one-page statement.

Find and read your state’s nursing practice act using this website. Find five items in your state’s NPA that surprise you or of which you were unaware. Identify each item and explain why you chose it.

Conduct some research and find out what the whistleblower protections are in your state. Are they primarily the federal ones, or does your state have additional protections? Describe the protections in your area in a brief paragraph.