The scope and standard of practice provides a guide for the nurses to understand the knowledge, skills Attitude and judgment that are required for practicing safely in the unit. To work in safe environment every nurse should know the unit specific guidelines and policies, scope of practice and also it’s equally important to know others scope of practice. Example if the nurse delegates any task to nurse assistant, one should know the scope of practice for the assistant, and whether it’s appropriate to delegate certain task. I would like to highlight this incident which recently occurred. My hospital is a teaching hospital and some student doctors are not within the guidelines. I found one of the student doctor doing thoracocentesis. Upon knowing, when I talked about timeout, it look he don’t even understand timeout should be performed with all the team and a nurse too. After my supervisor came to know we all discussed and found that student doctors are not supposed to perform any invasive procedure even there attending’s allow to perform . On our hospital website (intranet) nurses can search the doctor’s credentials and scope of practice by just applying name and all details is shown.
There are certain easy ways to do when accepting any task, just to provide safe and appropriate scope of practice. Check the task and verify, clarify and talk to supervisors if not comfortable. Demonstrated and documented competencies are year round in the units. Make sure to participate and keep updated. I have seen at times it’s hard to find policies on the hospital website. The easy way is get nurse educator and charge nurse to help with the procedure or task. For me to understand any task, to clarify the frequent calls are made to, nurse educator, assistant manager, pharmacist, MD, physical therapist, case manager. The reason is I want to make sure everything is safe and appropriate