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Assignment: Allocation of clients or client care activities among care providers in order to meet client care needs. Assignment occurs when the required care falls within the employing agency’s policies and role descriptions and within the regulated health care provider’s scope of practice. Assignment to unregulated care providers occurs when the required care falls within the employing agency’s policies and role description.

Client: An individual, family, group, population or entire community that requires nursing expertise. In some clinical settings, the client may be referred to as a patient or resident. In research, the client may be referred to as a participant.

Collaboration: A joint communication and decision-making process with the expressed goal of working together toward identified outcomes while respecting the unique qualities and abilities of each member of the group or team.

Competence: The integration and application of knowledge, skills and judgment required for safe and appropriate performance in an individual’s practice.

Critical thinking: A purposeful, disciplined and systematic process of continual questioning, logical reasoning and reflecting through the use of interpretation, inference, analysis, synthesis and evaluation to achieve a desired outcome.

Decision support tools: Evidence-based documents used by registered nurses to guide the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of client-specific problems.

Delegation: Sharing authority with other health care providers to provide a particular aspect of care. Delegation to unregulated care providers occurs when the required task is outside the role description and training of the unregulated care provider.

Evidence: Data derived from various sources including research, national guidelines, policies, consensus statements, expert opinion and quality improvement.

Fitness to practice: All the qualities and capabilities of an individual relevant to his or her capacity to practise as a nurse, including, but not limited to, any cognitive, physical, psychological or emotional condition, or a dependence on alcohol or drugs, that impairs his or her ability to practise nursing.

Health care team: Clients, health care professionals, unregulated care providers, students and others who may be involved in providing care.

Indicator: Illustration of how a Standard is applied and met. Indicators provide specific criteria that are used, when applicable, to measure the actual performance of an individual nurse.

Nursing science: Knowledge (e.g., concepts, constructs, principles, theories) of nursing derived from systematic observation, study and research.

Professional conduct: Behaving in a way that upholds the profession. This includes, but is not limited to, practising in accordance with BCCNM’s Standards of Practice.

Regulatory supervision: The process by which a nurse may authorize an activity to be performed by another person who does not otherwise have authority to perform the activity.

Scope of practice: The activities nurses are educated and authorized to perform as set out in the Nurses (Registered) and Nurse Practitioners Regulation under the Health Professions Act and complemented by standards, limits and conditions established by BCCNM.

Standard: An expected and achievable level of performance against which actual performance can be compared. It is the minimum level of acceptable performance.

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