Surgical techs in GI LAB

LPN's are not hired at our hospital I guess management feels they don't know enough. Now our surgical techs will be PCA and transport patients. The problems is the cuting tissue with a snare techs are not allowed to do that or inject through a scope. Everything else they are allowed to do. The snaring of tissue is done with the direct supervision of the physician. They have done this for 10 years and are better at it than any RN ever yet they are not qualified to do the job.

They are looking into RN's doing the cut on PEG tubes. This is also cutting tissue if RN's are not allowed to cut for PEG tubes does this mean RN's are not allowed to snare polyps?

If anyone can help me with this I live in Washington State.

The problem was Gi was always under Surgical services and at some point the surgical techs followed to Gi lab out of the surgical suite and the idea was that if they were able to do all the surgical services then why not GI.

Cautery is technically done by the physician and nothing is done in the room that is not done under the direct supervision of the physician.

Many hospitals in Washington state still use Surgical technicians to assist the physician and are supposedly not following the Scope of practice.

I believe the management at the hospital I work believes they want a full RN Staff and created policies that they want us to abide by.

We have had surgical techs working out of there scope of practice for over 10 years and it was never discussed that they were not working in there scope of practice. Now all of a sudden they are getting layed off after they teach the RNs the assisting side of GI.

It isn't like I don't want to learn it I feel that if they are not qualified to do the job why are they qualified to teach the job.

They are loosing there jobs shortly after teaching us this has created a lot of problems in a department that has always ran without any problems.