Who answers for a readmitted patient's whole stay? Under team nursing, nobody, and this NU507 Unit 1 post sets that against the 24-hour accountability of primary nursing. Searches like "nu 507 unit 1 assignment example", "nu507 unit 1 sample" and "nu507 unit 1 example" land here.
Nine Nurses in Five Days and No One Owned the Discharge: Responsibility, Accountability and Team Nursing
NU507 · Unit 1 Discussion
Posted by [Student Name]
The unit and the patient tally are composites; counts in brackets are the student's own.
Initial Post
Across [five] days on our composite medical unit, an [81]-year-old man with heart failure and chronic kidney disease, admitted for the fourth time this year, was cared for by [nine] registered nurses, [three] licensed practical nurses and [six] nursing assistants. His discharge teaching was done on the morning he left by a nurse who had met him that day. Two weeks later he was back. When our unit reviewed the admission, nobody could say who had owned his discharge, because in a real sense nobody had.
That result depends on a distinction the unit rarely makes. Responsibility is held for a task or a shift: I am responsible for my patients' care from 0700 to 1900. Accountability is held for an outcome over time: someone answers for whether this patient's admission achieved what it should, including whether he went home ready. Manthey (2002) built primary nursing on that distinction, assigning one registered nurse accountability for a patient's care from admission to discharge, with associate nurses carrying out the plan when the primary nurse is off. Under team nursing, responsibility is shared across a shift and handed on at its end, and accountability for the admission as a whole belongs to no one in particular.
Team nursing deserves a fair description. Our unit runs teams of one registered nurse leader, who also carries patients, one licensed practical nurse and two assistants for [twelve] beds. It was designed for a mixed skill mix and a shortage (Lambertsen, 1953), and it does that job: it lets a unit stretch a small number of registered nurses across many patients while keeping a licensed nurse in charge of each team. Its premise is that a written care plan and a good handoff can carry continuity that no single nurse holds.
The premise fails most visibly for one population: older adults with several chronic conditions who are readmitted again and again. Their care depends on details that live in people, not documents: which medication he stopped at home, which daughter actually manages his pills, what he understood yesterday. A nurse-led transitional care model that gave older adults one advanced practice nurse from hospital to home cut readmissions at 24 weeks from 37 to 20 percent (Naylor et al., 1999), which suggests that continuity held by one person matters for exactly this group. So my question for the section: on your unit, who owns a patient like this across an admission, and how would you know?
Reply to Marisol
Marisol, your unit uses a charge nurse to "own" complex discharges. I would ask whether that is accountability or responsibility with a bigger scope: does the charge nurse know the patient across the stay, or pick up the discharge on the last day? If it is the second, the gap may just have moved up one level.
References
Lambertsen, E. K. (1953). Nursing team organization and functioning. Teachers College, Columbia University.
Manthey, M. (2002). The practice of primary nursing (2nd ed.). Creative Health Care Management.
Naylor, M. D., Brooten, D., Campbell, R., Jacobsen, B. S., Mezey, M. D., Pauly, M. V., & Schwartz, J. S. (1999). Comprehensive discharge planning and home follow-up of hospitalized elders: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA, 281(7), 613-620. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.7.613
How this NU507 Unit 1 example is structured
The post moves from a count to a concept to a model to a population, mirroring the arc many sections of the course follow. Opening on the tally makes the ownership question concrete before any theory arrives, and keeping the patient composite and aggregate avoids a story that could identify anyone. The definitions paragraph does the first analytic work: accountability and responsibility are often used interchangeably, and the post separates them with one cited source rather than an opinion. Team nursing is then described fairly, including what it does well, stretching a mixed skill mix across vacancies, so the critique that follows reads as analysis rather than grievance. Naming the population in the final paragraph points toward the needs profile that later units build. Replies to classmates ask each to identify the premise their own model rests on.
Get an NU507 Unit 1 example written to your instructions
Sketch the care delivery model where you work or last practiced, plus the opening prompt and its marking criteria. Built around that model's ownership question, with definitions cited and a question left open for classmates, the post is written to your instructions and returned in 24-48h as a free first custom sample. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
NU507 Unit 1 questions, answered
What is the difference between responsibility and accountability in care delivery?
Responsibility is the obligation to carry out care during a shift or task; accountability is answering for the outcome over time. Manthey's primary nursing model assigned one nurse 24-hour accountability for a patient's plan across an admission, with associate nurses responsible on other shifts. The sample uses that distinction to show why a team model leaves an admission-long outcome without a clear owner.
Should the Unit 1 post recommend a better model?
Usually not yet. Opening prompts in model courses tend to ask for description and questions, and a recommendation made before the population and evidence have been examined can read as a conclusion in search of support. The sample describes the current model, names its premise and ends with a question, leaving recommendations to the units that follow.
Can I write about a model I only observed as a student?
Yes, if you describe it accurately and say how you know it. Many writers draw on a current or former workplace, a clinical placement or a published case. Keep any patient composite and any facility unnamed. The sample uses a composite medical unit and aggregate counts, so the argument depends on the model's structure rather than on a real person.