Chevelle1

This may be true for your state, but MI, that does not have nurse practice acts, make no differentiation between LPN/RN aside from a DON of a licensed long term care facility must be an RN. MI makes no other distinction aside from Nurse Practitioner’s role. Most nurses don’t know this as they recite what rules, if any, their employer have for RN/LPN as being law. They are wrong. Working in that LTCF, there is absolutely no nursing task or function that an RN does that an LPN cannot. NOT ONE. Assessments, care planning, nursing diagnosis’, etc are done by the ‘licensed nurse’ The state survey manual is very specific in their verbiage using ‘Licensed Nurse’. Nursing statutes for MI fall under the Occupational Regulation Sections of the Public Health Code. Each LTCF or hospital or other employer may have their own set of rules for differentiation between LPN/RN, but that is not a law, statute or regulation. MI makes the differentiation between the ‘licensed nurse’ (as the professional) and non licensed or non nursing professionals (CNA’s). Hopefully this clears this topic up as in my 13 years of nursing, I’ve listened to fellow nurses wrongly list nursing functions they believe RNs do and LPN’s cannot, without ever reading the statutes and public health code or survey manual. A case of “wrong information makes it way around the world before the truth gets up in the morning”