A nurse is delegating care for a group of four clients. Which of the following tasks should the nurse delegate to an assistive personnel (AP)?

A. Irrigate and perform a dressing change for a client who has a pressure injury wound. This task requires clinical judgment, sterile technique, and assessment of wound bed granulation or necrotic tissue. Nursing scope of practice dictates that complex wound care and irrigation must be performed by licensed personnel. Assistive personnel lack the training for such invasive clinical procedures. B. Obtain a daily weight on a client who has heart failure. Measurement of weight is a standardized, non-invasive data collection task that does not require clinical analysis by the person performing it. The assistive personnel can accurately record the numerical value and report it to the nurse. The nurse retains responsibility for interpreting the weight trend. C. Teach the use of an incentive spirometer to a postoperative client. Patient education and the initiation of teaching plans are core nursing responsibilities that cannot be delegated to unlicensed staff. Teaching requires assessing the client’s readiness to learn and evaluating their return demonstration for technique accuracy. Assistive personnel may only reinforce previously taught skills under specific guidelines. D. Administer oral PRN pain medication to a client who has arthritis. Medication administration requires knowledge of pharmacology, side effects, and the "five rights" of safety. Pro re nata (PRN) medications specifically require a nursing assessment to determine the clinical necessity of the dose. Assistive personnel are legally prohibited from administering any form of pharmacological agents to patients.