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Discussion

Prostate Exam by RN?

I have a question to satisfy my curiosity. I recently took advantage of free prostate screenings in the area which included a prostate exam. I got talking to the female who did the exam and she told me she was an RN working for the public health dept. I said are you also an NP but she said no just an RN. Are RN's qualified to so this exam. She seemed to know what she was doing , of course I probably wouldn't know the difference between a good and bad exam.

Thanks

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Been a while since I was in school but I remember a lecture or two on prostate exams. It was an ADN program.

We were taught how to do so in my ADN program, but I have never utilized that information in any way.

But figuring as laypersons can do breast exams and colonics, enemas and suppositories, I suppose that it is possible.

We weren't taught to do it in ADN, but were in the BSN assessment class, but we didn't do it. So given that, I would say it is an RN function, but one that isn't really utilized often in the real world.

The ARNP schools here they actually do it on a live person in their assessment class/lab. (a volunteer they pay to let the students examine him).

  • Expert

Learning to do a particular skill is simply a matter of learning that skill -- whether it was emphasized in school or not. She could have learned that particular skill in an on-the-job training program.

Nurses perform a lot of skills in practice are barely covered in school. That's why we have orientation programs and ongoing staff development programs. For example, very few nursing students learn how to manage neonatal ET tubes ... or hook a patient up to a dialysis machine ... or give chemotherapy ...and yet nurses do these things every day. What we learn in school only provides us with the foundation for practice. We learn a lot of particular skills and procedures after graduation, throughout our careers.

llg

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