Can nurses suture?

[amanda sue]

Under their legal scope of practice, can any nurses suture? LPNs, RNs, NPs, etc? Or is suturing only "allowed" by doctors and physician assitants. I ask because you often hear about military corpsmen and medics suturing (they are taught this during their intial training), but never nurses!

Thanks to all in advance.

[diane227, LPN, RN]

It is generally done by physicians, ARNP's, and PA's but when I was working as an ER nurse in a large county hospital we would get a lot of people in the suture room at once and the residents, medical students and I would suture patients because there were so many and we had to get them done. The surgery residents taught me simple, non complicated suturing technique.

[ZippyGBR, BSN, RN]

Of course NPs can suture. But for RNs to suture is dangerous. They dont teach that in RN school and 99% of them are not trained to do it. I have NEVER seen a doc let an RN suture anybody in the ED. Its always an NP that does it.

What an utterly ridiculous answer, as an RN who sutures this is a ridiculous answer to say the least... No one said just go ahead and do it, yes it's not a pre-registration skill but it doesn't mean that it cannot be taught and consolidated in clinical practice; unless there is particular problem with the way in which Nursing scope of practice is defined where you are - this kind of idiocy makes me thankful i am in the UK where the boundaries of Clinical practice for any health professional are defined by demonstrating and maintaining appropriate standards of practice rather than arbitrary delination in to silos of different people's tasks.

The billing stuff is just a distraction and a symptom of the messed up way in which the USA conducts it's clinical practice.

[LuxCalidaNP]

I find it facinating that there is so much alarm about this subject...

Many RNs who complete a standardized competency training in uncomplicated suturing provide safe wound closure in many settings. Many ambulatory and urgent care facilities have policy-procedures in place to ensure that the procedure meets the needed criteria for RNs to suture. If an RN can complete a training to be an RNFA (an skill-intensive roll), or insert a PICC line, they sure as heck can learn and execute simple wound closure techniques.