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Delegating vs. Assigning: What You Need to Know

Cynthia Saver and Georgia Reiner

Georgia Nursing April 2024

This article appears on page 10 of

Registered nurses (RNs) often delegate to other RNs, licensed practical nurses/vocational nurses (LPN/LVNs), and assistive personnel (AP). (In some states or jurisdictions, LPN/LVNs may be allowed to delegate, so “licensed nurses” will be used in this article.) Delegating appropriately protects patients and reduces the risk of legal liability, yet the parameters of delegation often are not fully understood.

One common area of misunderstanding is delegation vs. assignment. Knowing the differences between the two is essential to ensure you delegate appropriately. The primary difference relates to scope of practice and where the clinician learned the activities to be carried out.

Assignment According to national guidelines for nursing delegation from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) and American Nurses Association (ANA), an assignment refers to the “routine care, activities, and procedures that are within the authorized scope of practice of the RN or LPN/VN or part of the routine functions of the AP.” This definition covers fundamental skills that the assignee would have learned in a basic education program. A licensed nurse is still responsible for ensuring the assignment is carried out correctly.

Delegation According to the NCSBN/ANA guideline, delegation applies when the delegatee is performing a “specific nursing activity, skill, or procedure that is beyond the delegatee’s traditional role and not routinely performed.” As opposed to work that is part of an assignment, the work associated with delegation was not learned in a basic education program. Therefore, the delegatee must have obtained additional education and have verified competence in the delegated area for which they will be responsible. The licensed nurse maintains overall accountability for the patient, but the delegatee is responsible for the delegated activity, skill, or procedure.

Licensed nurses can’t delegate activities that involve clinical reasoning, nursing judgment, or critical decision making, and the delegated responsibility has to be within the delegator’s scope of practice under the state’s or jurisdiction’s nurse practice act (NPA).

Responsibilities Organizational administrators, the delegator, and the delegatee each have responsibilities when an activity, skill, or procedure is delegated.

Professionals who work at the administrative or managerial level of the organization set the cultural tone for the nursing work environment and are responsible for managing the delegation processes. Those at the administrative level within an organization define what nursing responsibilities may be delegated, to whom, and under what set(s) of circumstances. They are also responsible for developing and maintaining policies and procedures associated with delegation, periodically evaluating the efficacy and safety of delegation processes, and training and educating staff.

The delegator is responsible for determining the needs of the patient, when delegation is appropriate, and if the delegatee is competent to complete the delegated task. Delegators must follow delegation guidelines in the NPA and relevant organizational policies and procedures. Clear communication is key, and the delegator must be available as a resource to the delegatee. Delegators also need to evaluate outcomes as they maintain overall accountability for the patient. Delegators must be prepared to step in at any point if it appears the delegatee is not handling the assignment appropriately. Any problems should be reported to nursing leadership.

The delegatee is responsible for only accepting activities that fall within their competence and that they feel comfortable completing safely. Delegatees must communicate with the delegator, particularly if the patient’s condition changes, and complete the activity correctly, including fulfilling any documentation requirements. Delegatees maintain accountability for the delegated activity and need to notify the delegator immediately if they have difficulty completing the task. 

One special case NCSBN notes that in some cases, APs are taught how to perform skills that were previously thought to be exclusively RN and LPN/LVN responsibilities, such as certified medical assistants administering injections. In these cases, it’s best to consider such tasks as being delegated and, therefore, validate competency.

Keeping patients safe Knowing the differences between assigning and delegating helps protect patients and avoid legal action should an error occur. Assignments involve routine tasks learned in basic education and that fall under designated scope of practice, while delegation involves tasks that were learned through additional education and for which competency has been determined.

Good communication and an understanding of the responsibilities of delegators and delegatees is essential to avoid misunderstanding. Remember, the licensed nurse remains accountable for the patient, but the delegatee is responsible for the delegated task.

Five rights of delegation The NCSBN outlines five rights of delegation. In the case of a lawsuit, a key component would be whether you adhered to these rights: 

• Right task. The task needs to fall within the delegatee’s job description or is part of organizational policies and procedures. 
• Right circumstance. The patient must be stable. 
• Right person. The delegatee must have the appropriate skills and knowledge to perform the task. 
• Right directions and communication. Clear directions need to be given, with the delegator verifying understanding by the delegatee. Communication must be two-way, with the delegatee asking questions as needed. 
• Right supervision and evaluation. The delegator needs to monitor the delegated activity, including evaluating patient outcomes. 

Article by: Cynthia Saver, MS, RN, President of CLS Development, Inc., in Columbia, Md and Georgia Reiner, MS, CPHRM, Risk Analyst, NSO

References National Council of State Boards of Nursing. National guidelines for nursing delegation. J Nurs Reg. 2016;7(1):5- 12.

NCSBN, ANA. National guidelines for nursing delegation. 2019.

Disclaimer: The information offered within this article reflects general principles only and does not constitute legal advice by Nurses Service Organization (NSO) or establish appropriate or acceptable standards of professional conduct. Readers should consult with an attorney if they have specific concerns. Neither Affinity Insurance Services, Inc. nor NSO assumes any liability for how this information is applied in practice or for the accuracy of this information. Please note that Internet hyperlinks cited herein are active as of the date of publication but may be subject to change or discontinuation.

This risk management information was provided by Nurses Service Organization (NSO), the nation’s largest provider of nurses’ professional liability insurance coverage for over 550,000 nurses since 1976. The individual professional liability insurance policy administered through NSO is underwritten by American Casualty Company of Reading, Pennsylvania, a CNA company. Reproduction without permission of the publisher is prohibited. For questions, send an e-mail to [email protected] or call 1-800-247-1500. www.nso.com .

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How to assign a value to a variable in a Django template?

e.g., given this template:

While testing it, it would be useful to define the value of the variable without touching the python code that invokes this template. So I'm looking for something like this

Does something like this exist in Django?

• django-templates

9 Answers 9

You can use the with template tag.

• 64 but can you change the variable's value in the with? –  David 天宇 Wong Commented Feb 16, 2014 at 10:31
• 4 It seems you cannot declare a container (I've tried list and tuple) in a with clause –  Vladislav Ivanishin Commented Mar 18, 2015 at 1:58
• 1 If you need to declare a list, use make_list. docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/ref/templates/builtins/#make-list –  MrValdez Commented Jul 1, 2016 at 7:55
• 4 Jinja says it's {% set myvar=value %} why it doesn't work in django? –  holms Commented Mar 10, 2018 at 1:08
• 15 @holms Because Django doesn't use Jinja :-) docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/topics/templates –  elimisteve Commented May 12, 2018 at 0:04

Create a template tag:

The app should contain a templatetags directory, at the same level as models.py , views.py , etc. If this doesn’t already exist, create it - don’t forget the __init__.py file to ensure the directory is treated as a Python package.

Create a file named define_action.py inside of the templatetags directory with the following code:

Note: Development server won’t automatically restart. After adding the templatetags module, you will need to restart your server before you can use the tags or filters in templates.

Then in your template you can assign values to the context like this:

• 4 in my case after loop this returns old value :( –  holms Commented Mar 13, 2018 at 9:46
• 8 In the latest version it appears that you can use simple_tag instead of assignment_tag (and it worked for me). –  Katharine Osborne Commented Mar 13, 2018 at 19:44
• Issue I got with this solution is that it appears, that you cannot override values. –  Jakub Jabłoński Commented Mar 13, 2020 at 15:57
• 1 if you want to use this technique to set a list instead of just a value, check this: stackoverflow.com/a/34407158/2193235 –  msb Commented Jun 13, 2020 at 1:45
• 2 if you are setting the variable as an integer and you want to increment it (for example), you need to use add : {% define counter|add:1 as counter %} . Similarly for other operations. –  msb Commented Jun 13, 2020 at 1:47

An alternative way that doesn't require that you put everything in the "with" block is to create a custom tag that adds a new variable to the context. As in:

This will allow you to write something like this in your template:

Note that most of this was taken from here

• How about assigning variables to other variables present in the context? And on a different note: allowing templates to arbitrarily assign context variables without checking if they exist already may have security implications. A more sensible approach in my opinion would be to check the context for the variable before attempting to assign it: –  user656208 Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 11:49
• if context.get(self.var_name): raise SuspiciousOperation("Attempt to assign variable from template already present in context") –  user656208 Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 11:50

There are tricks like the one described by John; however, Django's template language by design does not support setting a variable (see the "Philosophy" box in Django documentation for templates ). Because of this, the recommended way to change any variable is via touching the Python code.

• 8 Thanks for the pointer. From a perspective of a designer is it sometimes easier to quickly set a variable to test various states of a page while designing it. Not suggesting this practice to be used in a running code. –  Alexis Commented Jul 1, 2009 at 22:21
• 3 the "with" tag is accepted in django1.0. So looks like they are finally amending their philosophy :). –  Evgeny Commented Dec 20, 2009 at 19:35
• 4 As a matter of facts, the "with" tag is just for aliases. This may have a huge impact on performance (and on readability as well!) but it is not really setting a variable in traditional programming terms. –  rob Commented Dec 20, 2009 at 23:48

The best solution for this is to write a custom assignment_tag . This solution is more clean than using a with tag because it achieves a very clear separation between logic and styling.

Start by creating a template tag file (eg. appname/templatetags/hello_world.py ):

Now you may use the get_addressee template tag in your templates:

• 6 For folks using the newer Django versions, its called simple_tag now! Save the time to figure out why "register.." is not recognized in your code... –  kaya Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 9:25

Perhaps the default template filter wasn't an option back in 2009...

• I must say that this is what I was looking! It can be also be used with with : {% with state=form.state.value|default:other_context_variable %} instead of other_context_variable we can also use any 'string_value' as well –  Saurav Kumar Commented Feb 7, 2018 at 9:48
• But it will print it, and I need to save it for later use –  holms Commented Mar 10, 2018 at 1:18

Use the with statement .

I can't imply the code in first paragraph in this answer . Maybe the template language had deprecated the old format.

This is not a good idea in general. Do all the logic in python and pass the data to template for displaying. Template should be as simple as possible to ensure those working on the design can focus on design rather than worry about the logic.

To give an example, if you need some derived information within a template, it is better to get it into a variable in the python code and then pass it along to the template.

In your template you can do like this:

In your template-tags you can add a tag like this:

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