Question for all you legal experts out there. One of the for-profit hospitals in the Phx area now has an LPN in charge of the ED. This is when there are RN's actually working. What the ED director has done is change the wording of the charge nurse and says it is a "flow control" nurse. Well, in my opinion this person is assessing, triaging to appropriate rooms, etc, i.e monitored vs unmonitored bed, deciding what rooms ambo pts go into, deciding which pt needs to come to the back first, I believe it to be out of the scope of practice of the LPN, and I do know about this as I worked there as an actual charge nurse recently and left there due to the poor quality of care and the fact that profit was all they were looking at and did not care about employees or patients for that matter. In fact, I think a for profit hospital should be illegal !
