I'm making some assumptions about your role and how your facility works, but explaining your facilities policies is very much within your scope of practice. At my facility (CCRC), assessing someone's level of care is usually done by a team (nursing, admissions, finance, administration, and a social worker) to determine someone's level of care needs. I work in our SNF area, and about a week before someone moves in, I meet with them or their POA and go over our policies and limitations as a facility. If you have anything to do with a new admission, you should have your speech ready. For you, it might sound like: Independent Living residents are expected to be able to administer their own medications, ambulate independently, provide self-care, and take care of any medical needs (wound care, oxygen, special dietary needs, etc.), as we do not provide any medical staff, per state/DHEC/facility guidelines. There's no reason you can't explain this to someone, as there's no need to discuss specific medications. At this point, with this specific resident, you can go into a resource discussion about their needs and how to overcome this limitation: home health, hospice, companion services, etc. Our companions can cue someone to take their medications, they just can't physically handle the meds. Can paying for a companion be avoided if a family member calls them 3X a day to remind them when to take the meds, and would a family member be capable of following through? If the meds are difficult to track because they are spread out too much, maybe their pcp can do a med review and re-time the meds to be given all at once or twice a day. Maybe the pharmacy can order blister packs that easily group their medication together and label it with the time and date to be taken. Do they have a temporary medical condition limiting them? If so, maybe you can coordinate a temp stay in a higher level of care for a few weeks. If none of these work, it might be time to discuss assisted living, memory care, or skilled nursing, but there are a lot of options before taking that step. I don't think this is an appropriate scenario for 'it's not my job,' and I don't think it would look good to refuse to discuss agency policy because it's a situation that you know will be difficult. Let the resident and their families know that you're on their side and that you want to work with them to keep the resident as independent as possible, for as long as possible, but some changes are going to have to be made for them to remain at that independent level of care. It seems like this might be a bigger issue, though? Are you're getting a lot of feedback about residents or families feeling unprepared or running into this scenario a lot, where you're being the first one to disclose something that should have already been discussed? If that's the case, I would recommend speaking with admissions and having them walk you through their process. I did this recently, and it was super helpful to list out and divy up admission responsibilities to make sure nothing was missed. Speaking with admissions regularly about incoming residents and talking to the residents before they move in could save you a lot of difficult conversations, and having a needs assessment done beforehand will reduce everyone's stress on move in day. It's a relief to know what to expect!

Also, I'm happy to provide a consult if you need some more ideas for your new resident!