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Decision Making: A Tool for LPN Practice
The CLPNA’s LPN Practice Decision Making Tool can help determine if it is appropriate for an individual LPN to perform a specific nursing activity.
Along with the Code of Ethics, standards of practice, policies, practice guidelines, and info sheets, the questions in this tool will support LPNs in thinking critically about their scope of practice.
Using the Tool to Support Safe Practice
The Decision Making Tool will guide LPNs through the different factors that go into making decisions about performing nursing activities. It asks questions about legislation, regulation, employer policies, individual skills and abilities, and different considerations about the client and environment.
To use this tool, we recommend LPNs refamiliarize themselves with a few key documents:
- Standards of Practice for LPNs in Canada: provides a national framework for LPN practice and sets the minimum expected behaviours for registrants.
- Code of Ethics for LPNs: articulates the values of the profession and the responsibilities that LPNs uphold and promote.
- Health Professions Restricted Activity Regulation: outlines the restricted activities that LPNs are authorized to perform.
- Standards of Practice on Restricted Activities, Advanced Practice, and Supervision: explains the minimum requirements of LPNs performing restricted activities.
Using this tool promotes honest self-assessment and the use of critical thinking skills to determine whether it is appropriate to perform an activity. Depending on the results, LPNs may need to seek further guidance with other members of a client’s healthcare team, their supervisor, an educator, or the CLPNA Practice Department.
Recent Updates
The Decision Making Tool was recently updated to complement the practice guideline, Determining LPN Scope of Practice.
The questions in this tool cover the same factors and considerations that are described in the practice guideline. This includes regulatory, employer, and individual scopes of practice and the “three-factor framework” (nurse, client, environment) used for decision-making.
The Decision Making Tool and the practice guideline can be used together to support critical thinking and self-assessment.
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