The other night at work I learned that one of my friends at work(I work in a hospital) who is a CNA is in pretty deep trouble because she charted a pt's O2 flow rate via NC along with her v/s. She didn't change the flow rate or route, anything like that, just charted how much O2 the pt was on with the pt's O2 SAT and other v/s. Well, when she charted this, she backtimed it in the computer charting and somehow must have accidentally charted over the RT's charting for that time and changed the RT's charting so the RT told on her to her manager and my friend is in trouble and may lose her job for this. The manager told my friend that she is practicing out of her scope by charting the O2 flow rate because she's "assessing the pt's O2, and that's a medication." In my opinion, just charting an O2 SAT and saying the pt is on O2 doesn't tell the nurse or doctor much without knowing the L/min of O2 the pt was getting...
Also, I just received an updated list of the tasks which are in my scope of practice within my facility and a few things have been removed from my scope which isn't that big of a deal, I guess it means less for me to do, but it's just the idea that now I can't do some things that I did before to help the pts and assist the nurses..
I always try to help the nurses in the best ways I can, by trying to think like them and not just be task oriented... but I'm obviously not allowed to think, according to how my friend is getting in trouble for, in my opinion, being a good, thoughtful, helpful, and smart aide!
I'm just terrified that when I'm a nurse I'm going to be punished for thinking outside the box and not just following the all powerful doctors orders.
