The coordinator of a home care team has been informed by the administration that the team must begin to care for patients who have external defibrillators in the home. The nursing staff is not familiar with this technology. The team leader must decide who to assign to care for these patients.

1. Use the pre–decision-making process to analyze this issue.

2. How soon does a decision need to be made?

Determine when the agency will be accepting patients for home care who have external defibrillators.

3. Who has the power to make the decision?

The administration decided against accepting this type of patient. Determine if

you will be able to decide when and how many of these patients are accepted for home care. 

4. What are the controllable and uncontrollable factors? After gathering this information, you will be able to determine what you can control.

You can then move on to decide how best to prepare the nurses to care for these patients.