Team nursing on a composite medical floor, described for NU507 Unit 2 by role, staffing and information path, ends on the premise that documents can carry continuity. Searches like "nu 507 unit 2 assignment example", "nu507 unit 2 sample" and "nu507 unit 2 example" land here.
Continuity Through Documents: A Description of Team Nursing on a Composite Medical Unit, and the Premise It Rests On
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
NU507: Promoting Optimal Models and Systems for Health Care Delivery
Unit 2 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The unit, staffing and history are composites; figures in brackets are the student's own. Published sources are cited for the model's origins.
History
Team nursing was developed in the early 1950s, most closely associated with Eleanor Lambertsen's work at Teachers College, Columbia University, as a way to organize care when hospitals had too few registered nurses and a growing workforce of practical nurses and aides (Lambertsen, 1953). A registered nurse team leader would plan care for a group of patients and direct a small team of licensed and unlicensed staff who carried much of it out. The model assumed that the team leader's planning and supervision, rather than direct care by a registered nurse, would ensure quality.
Our composite medical unit, 36 beds divided into three sections of twelve, adopted team nursing [three] years ago, when registered nurse vacancies reached [22] percent and the hospital hired licensed practical nurses to fill the gap. Vacancies have since fallen to about [8] percent, but the model has stayed.
Roles, Defined by Who Decides What
The team leader, a registered nurse, carries [three] patients directly and holds the plan of care for all twelve on the section. She assesses every patient at the start of the shift, decides who needs registered nurse assessment or teaching that day, delegates tasks to the licensed practical nurse and assistants, and is the person physicians and case managers call.
The licensed practical nurse provides care for most of the remaining nine patients within her scope: medication administration, dressing changes, data collection and reinforcement of teaching. She reports changes to the team leader, who decides what to do about them.
Two nursing assistants provide personal care, mobility, vital signs and intake and output for all twelve patients, reporting to the team leader and the licensed practical nurse.
Defining roles by decisions rather than tasks matters here, because the model's premise turns on who decides what. In this unit, the team leader decides nearly everything clinically significant, for twelve patients, while carrying three.
Staffing
Each twelve-hour shift, per twelve-bed section:
1. Day shift: one registered nurse team leader, one licensed practical nurse, two nursing assistants.
2. Night shift: one registered nurse team leader, one licensed practical nurse, one nursing assistant.
3. Across the week: team leaders rotate among the three sections and between days and nights; a patient staying five days will typically meet [four] to [six] different team leaders.
Communication Paths
Information moves physically, and following it shows where it can thin. At 0700, the off-going team leader gives the on-coming team leader a report on all twelve patients, using a structured form. At 0730, the team leader holds a short huddle with the licensed practical nurse and the assistants, assigning patients and flagging priorities. During the shift, the licensed practical nurse and assistants report to the team leader, who relays significant changes to physicians and updates the care plan. At 1900, the team leader gives report to the next team leader, and the licensed practical nurse gives her own shorter report to the next licensed practical nurse.
Two points stand out. The patient's plan passes through the team leader at every step, so its quality depends on one person holding twelve patients' details. And the people closest to the patient, the licensed practical nurse and the assistants, pass information to each other only through the team leader or in a brief peer handoff.
Discharge
Discharge teaching is done by whichever licensed nurse holds the patient on the day of discharge. If the patient is among the team leader's three, she teaches; otherwise, the licensed practical nurse reinforces teaching that a registered nurse is supposed to have started, and the team leader signs the discharge instructions. In practice, [most] teaching for complex patients happens on the discharge morning, often by a nurse who met the patient that day.
What the Model Does Well, and What It Costs
Team nursing has real strengths on this unit. It allowed the hospital to keep beds open during a vacancy crisis. It gives licensed practical nurses and assistants a clear line of supervision, and it gives physicians one registered nurse to call per section. Team leaders develop skill in prioritizing across many patients, and new graduates can learn from a team leader before carrying a full assignment themselves.
The model also has a cost that the unit has not measured. It lowers the share of registered nurses in direct care. A large cross-sectional study of European hospitals found that each 10-point increase in the proportion of professional nurses among nursing staff was associated with lower odds of patient death, and that substituting one assistant for one professional nurse per 25 patients was associated with higher odds of dying (Aiken et al., 2017). That study was cross-sectional and cannot show cause, and it studied assistants rather than licensed practical nurses, but it is a reason not to assume that skill mix is neutral. The contrast with primary nursing is also worth stating now: Manthey (2002) designed primary nursing precisely to put accountability for each patient in one registered nurse's hands, the opposite of spreading it across a team.
The Premise and What It Predicts
The model's premise is continuity through documents rather than people: that a written care plan and good handoffs can carry what a patient needs from shift to shift and nurse to nurse. If the premise holds, a patient's care should look the same no matter which team leader is on, and nothing important should depend on one nurse knowing the patient.
That premise produces predictions the unit could test. If it holds, discharge teaching should be as effective on the discharge morning as teaching spread across the stay; medication discrepancies at discharge should be no more common for patients with many team leaders than for those with few; and readmission rates for complex older adults should not differ from units using models with more continuity. If it fails, the failures should cluster in patients whose needs depend on details that live in people rather than in the chart: older adults with many medications, caregivers who change and admissions that repeat. The population profile in the next unit examines those patients, and the comparison after it tests the predictions against another model. Studies measuring nurse continuity have found it low on many units, with a unit-level index well below the ideal of one, although continuity by itself was not associated with fewer pressure injuries once patient factors were considered (Stifter et al., 2015). Whether it matters for readmission is the question this course keeps asking.
References
Aiken, L. H., Sloane, D., Griffiths, P., Rafferty, A. M., Bruyneel, L., McHugh, M., Maier, C. B., Moreno-Casbas, T., Ball, J. E., Ausserhofer, D., & Sermeus, W. (2017). Nursing skill mix in European hospitals: Cross-sectional study of the association with mortality, patient ratings, and quality of care. BMJ Quality and Safety, 26(7), 559-568. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2016-005567
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.
Stifter, J., Yao, Y., Lodhi, M. K., Lopez, K. D., Khokhar, A., Wilkie, D. J., & Keenan, G. M. (2015). Nurse continuity and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers: A comparative analysis using an electronic health record "big data" set. Nursing Research, 64(5), 361-371. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNR.0000000000000112
How this NU507 Unit 2 example is structured
Description precedes judgment throughout, since a model evaluated before it has been accurately described invites the charge of caricature. History comes first in a paragraph, enough to show team nursing was designed for a mixed skill mix and a shortage, which is exactly why this unit adopted it. Roles are defined by license and by what each person decides, not only by tasks, because the premise turns on who decides what. The communication section follows information physically, huddle to bedside to handoff, so the points where it can thin out are visible without being argued yet. Discharge receives its own heading as the moment the model's premise is most exposed. Its last section states the premise explicitly and turns it into testable predictions, which the population profile and the comparison in later units can confirm or refute.
Get an NU507 Unit 2 example written to your instructions
Name the model your unit uses, how staffing looks on a typical shift and who teaches at discharge, all in general terms, then add the Unit 2 prompt and rubric. A description that defines roles by decision, traces information and states the premise as testable is written to those instructions, back within 24-48h; the first custom sample is free. 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 2 questions, answered
How is team nursing different from functional nursing?
Functional nursing divides work by task, one nurse giving medications, another doing treatments, with a charge nurse coordinating. Team nursing assigns a group of patients to a small team under an RN leader who plans their care. Both use a mixed skill mix, but team nursing keeps a planner close to the patients. The sample defines both in a paragraph so its label is beyond dispute.
What does naming the model's premise involve?
Stating what the model takes for granted about continuity, responsibility or skill, as a claim that could be checked. For team nursing that is often that a written plan and a handoff can carry continuity across changing staff. The sample states its unit's premise that way and lists what the unit would observe if it held, which gives later comparisons something to test.
Should the description include staffing numbers?
Where you can, yes, labeled as approximate if needed. A model's premise depends on its arithmetic, and a reader cannot judge team nursing without knowing how many patients each role covers. The sample gives a per-shift staffing table with bracketed figures, which also becomes the baseline for the staffing effect counted later in the course.