I'm an RN in a hospital-based surgery clinic. Other hospital-based surgical specialties share our suite and hold clinic as well. Across our outpatient organization, there is a black-and-white policy that only clinical staff wear scrubs. However, a surgery scheduler for another specialty has begun showing up to work in scrubs for the past couple of weeks. That in and of itself is not a major deal to me as surgery schedulers are not typically patient-facing--their patient contact tends to happen over the phone.
However, I have twice in the past week randomly overheard this scheduler asking to observe nurse visits with minor procedures, and the nurses allow it. These nurses and the scheduler have worked together for years and exhibit a very close-knit dynamic. To complicate matters, their manager works at another clinic site; the manager of my suite is not technically their manager.
My concern is that this admin/clerical staff represents herself to patients as clinical. I doubt she straight-up says she's clinical, but she's in the room during procedures and the scrubs give the impression that her presence is somehow relevant. I do not like the idea of patients being an exhibit for someone who has mentioned to me more than once that she wants to be a nurse but for whatever reason it hasn't happened. Patients do not exist to be our personal learning experiences--whether we're clinical staff or not. It's one thing if we're a teaching facility and/or the patient has signed a form indicating they're okay with observers. That's not the case here.
Should I do anything? I am the last person to be a tattletale in ANY situation, or contribute to selling the drama in our already drama-filled ambulatory setting. My philosophy is to fight the important battles (exceedingly few and far between) and to fly below management's radar while being the best nurse I can be the rest of the time.
