Confused, well I'm referring to the days when RN's took care of hygiene, dressed wounds, fed stroke patients etc. Someone once said that these are unskilled jobs and that unskilled people can take care of such minor tasks. It was actually someone referring to one of my last posts on this site.
Does anyone else feels this is wrong? It's these tasks which keep us in touch with the patient. For example, when we wash a patient we assess skin turgor. When we feed we assess the stroke victim's gag reflex. When we dress a wound, we observe each day its progress.
I realize that we do so much more, in some cases diagnose, treat/prescribe, or maybe we're nurse anaesthetists, but I feel that the absolute basics should always be a part of nursing. I am happy to delegate some basic jobs, but it should never be delegated because we feel it is a simple unskilled job for the unskilled health worker.

alot of places now have Total Patient Care where the RN does it all. It makes for better consistant patient care but because of the work load some things get missed. LPNs and CNAs were phased out of the staff-leaving RNs with too much to do and too little time to do it. They brought CNAs back but not LPNs. It's a good idea but the patient to nurse ratio needs to be lighter to make it work. We can't be everywhere and do everything, that's why we need CNAs. They are our eyes and ears.