Doing a favor vs. being an RN

[anon456]

I am a brand new RN and not sure where the line is here--- if you have a neighbor who had just had surgery and can't reach the wound to do bid bandage changes, and his squeamish wife asks you if you wouldn't mind doing the bandage changes for her, would you be able to say yes? Or would that violate some nursing act? Same with this same neighbor asking you to hand him prescribed meds so he doesn't have to get out the chair to reach them?

I know that a non RN could legally do this as a favor to the person, but as an RN would I have some kind of liability risk or be practicing in the wrong way?

Another one I get a lot is friends asking me what I think of such and such med that they have been prescribed. I try to keep it general such as "this med belongs to this certain class, and I have learned that it's used for this or that purpose" but I tell them that I can't give personal advice about how they should take the med and their doctor needs to be the one to ask about that.

If you could clear this up for me I would really appreciate it!

[SummitRN, BSN, RN]

As you have no orders or MD license to function under, you cannot perform RN specific tasks. You are limited to the level of a lay person.

You can do anything a lay person can do. If the doctor expected the wife to do it and gave her instructions, you can do it with the instructions as long as you feel you can meet the standard of care.

For advice, you can tell EVERYTHING you've learned that is factual and evidenced based. EDUCATE! EDUCATE! EDUCATE! Isn't that one the nurse's greatest powers for advocacy? Your license does not tape your mouth shut. What you have to be careful of is giving conclusion or opinions that are not extremely conservative ("but to be sure, see your PCP") and heavily disclaimed ("I'm just your friend, not your nurse, and there could be things I do not know about your problem or health that would change what I told you.")

Then again, IANAL!