New nurse- question r/t her job

[NewNurse91D]

Hi everyone!!

I have a quick question and I wanted to get some advice from other nurses, especially nurses who have been practicing for a while.

I am a 'baby' nurse, having gotten my license a little over a year ago. I currently work for an In-Home Care company, as their RN. And amoungest many duties, I do all new and current client assessments, care plans and all new client paperwork and admission processes, I also am the "supervisor" for all our GNA's. It's a small company and our clients are either Medicaid or private pay.

Anyways, I've been working for this company since before I got my RN, working with them through nursing school as a GNA.

Now that I'm on board as their RN- it's like they think "oh my gosh we have someone that we think we know what their job entails and what they're licensed to perform". None of my bosses have ANY healthcare experience or training. So they don't really know anything about a nurses duties, and liability when performing and documenting all my asssessments and Care plans, teaching, dressing changes/etc. which has been frustrating. It's like they view me as some personal pocket nurse and throw weird requests at me that I'm not sure what to do with.

The current issue and question I have is this:

So my boss (the owner) has a daughter-in-law in nursing school. She's having a hard time with her assessments and my boss wants to me to help her out by teaching her and practicing assessments with her. Which I understand- no problem. I thought, okay she can come into the office a couple days and we can go through a physical assessment and practice on the lady's in the office. But my boss, wants me to go a step further and BRING HER TO CLIENT'S HOMES, let her observe me do my assessments (which I'm iffy about because I don't feel like that's appropriate since she is not an employee) and the worse part- LET HER PERFORM AN 'ASSESSMENT' WHILE I SUPERVISE!!!!

I'm not comfortable with the last 2 things. I feel like the last one is completely illegal. I mean, she's not a nurse!! So she can legally "assess" anything!

Also, she is not an employee, and I'm NOTTT a clinical instructor.

SO- what do you guys think? Am I wrong in my thinking? Is what my boss is asking of me legal and appropriate? I'm going to look in my nurse practice act when I get home but I wanted to post on here to see what you guys think. As a new nurse, I'm not sure about these kinds of things. So any advice or knowledge would be super helpful!!

Thank you :)

[jennylee321]

Yes that would be inappropriate, explain to them all the reasons you just say said.

[LovingLife123]

I would simply ask your boss if she has the Liability Insurance to cover her. It would be like a nursing student doing a clinical rotation, but the nursing students liability is covered by their school. This is not through the school. So I'd want to know who is covering her liability.

Contrary to popular belief, nursing students do not work under a RN's license and that point needs to be made. It's an assessment. And I personally would never allow a student to complete their own assessment without my own assessment.

When I have a student, I allow them to listen, and then I have them tell me what they hear and see if it matches up with me. If they are wrong, we just discuss what my findings are and why. We talk about lung sounds, bowel sounds..............

My other question would be do these patients agree to have a student listen to them? Going into another person's home is a big deal. They may not want students in their homes.

But first and foremost, is your boss footing the liability on this? I wouldn't do it unless she had an insurance policy covering students in place.

[NewNurse91D]

Yes exactly! My boss did say that she would call the clients to ask them if they were comfortable with it.

And that's what I thought- I'm not a clinical instructor so I didn't think it was appropriate.

I'm nervous about saying all of this to her :/

But thank you so much for your advice and information!