Establishing Priorities

Imagine this: You step onto the med-surg floor, coffee in hand. The moment your shift starts, four call bells light up. One client is recovering from a major surgery, another is suddenly confused, a third is complaining of a throbbing headache, and a fourth has a localized skin infection. Who do you walk to first? Who do you walk to last?

This isn't just an exercise in time management. This is the magnificent, life-saving art of prioritization. In nursing, prioritization determines the specific order in which nursing interventions are provided to multiple clients. It is how we translate the raw science of pathophysiology into a sequential plan of attack to keep human beings alive.

We don't guess. We don't just see the person who yelled the loudest. We look at the physics and biology of the human body, and we evaluate the pathophysiology of multiple clients concurrently to identify the individual at greatest risk of imminent harm.

Let’s pull back the curtain and look at the actual rules of the game.