A charge nurse is delegating tasks for a group of clients on a medical surgical unit. Which of the following tasks should the nurse delegate to the assistive personnel?

Rationale for correct choices:

• Mania: The client exhibits classic signs of mania, including decreased need for sleep, excessive energy, impulsive spending, grandiosity, pressured and disorganized speech, and poor self-care. These behaviors reflect a manic episode, often seen in bipolar disorder, which requires careful monitoring and intervention.
• Euphoric mood: The client demonstrates an abnormally elevated and joyous mood, along with inflated self-confidence and excessive sociability. This euphoric mood is a hallmark feature of mania and differentiates it from other psychiatric conditions such as depression or delirium.

Rationale for incorrect choices:

• Major depressive disorder: This disorder presents with persistent low mood, anhedonia, and decreased energy. The client displays the opposite symptoms, including hyperactivity, elevated mood, and impulsivity, making depression an unlikely diagnosis.
• Delirium: Delirium is characterized by an acute change in attention, confusion, and disorientation, often fluctuating throughout the day. While the client is disoriented to place, the presence of sustained elevated mood and hyperactivity supports mania rather than delirium.
• Panic disorder: Panic disorder involves sudden, intense episodes of fear with physical symptoms like palpitations, shortness of breath, and sweating. The client’s presentation is chronic and includes mood elevation and impulsive behaviors, which are inconsistent with panic disorder.
• Catatonia: Catatonia involves motor immobility, mutism, or extreme negativism. The client is highly active, with constant movement and pressured speech, which is the opposite of catatonic presentation.
• Anhedonia: Anhedonia refers to the inability to experience pleasure and is a symptom of depression. The client shows excessive pleasure-seeking behaviors, including socializing and impulsive spending, making anhedonia inconsistent with the current presentation.
• Hypervigilance: Hypervigilance involves heightened alertness and exaggerated startle response, often seen in anxiety or PTSD. The client’s primary features are elevated mood and impulsive behavior rather than persistent vigilance.
• Magical thinking: Magical thinking involves believing that one’s thoughts or actions can influence unrelated events. While the client reports hallucinations, there is no evidence of magical thinking as the hallucinations do not involve causative beliefs.
• Alogia: Alogia is a reduction in speech output, typically seen in schizophrenia or severe depression. The client’s speech is pressured, loud, and disorganized, which is opposite to alogia.

A. Cleanse the insertion site of the drain using a circular motion toward the center: Proper technique involves cleaning from the least contaminated area (the center) outward to the surrounding skin, not toward the center, to prevent introducing pathogens into the wound.

B. Irrigate the wound with a low-pressure flow of solution: Low-pressure irrigation helps remove debris and exudate without damaging tissue or disrupting healing. It is a safe and effective method for cleansing an abdominal incision.

C. Irrigate the wound using a 10-mL syringe: Using a small syringe can create high-pressure flow, which may traumatize tissue. Larger volume syringes (e.g., 30–60 mL) with controlled, low-pressure flow are recommended for wound irrigation.

D. Cleanse the wound starting at the bottom and moving upward: Wound cleaning should proceed from the least contaminated area (top or center of the incision) toward more contaminated areas (periphery) to reduce the risk of introducing bacteria into the wound.