Working "below your license"

[MattiesMama]

This was sort of brought up in another thread but I wanted to expand the topic a bit...as we all know, the market is tough right now for nurses, esp. new grads. I've been contemplating changing strategy and looking for ANY job in healthcare that I can find-whether it's unit secretary, CNA, or even a janitor at this point!

Ideally I would love to be an ER-tech, as my dream job is to be an ER nurse once I'm an RN (I'm an LPN right now). The requirements for that seem a little vague-basically it says you need to be either a CNA or EMT and then you have a couple weeks of paid on the job training. I called a couple places and they told me they really didn't know if it was legal or not!

Does anyone know what the kaws are regarding this? Does it vary from state to state?

[pers]

I've known a number of people who work below their license, when I was in nursing school many of the "techs" we worked with were actually new grads waiting on nursing positions to open up. I've not seen it where I currently live but my facility is always hiring nurses so it's not been a possibility.

I'm not really sure what could be expected of someone working below their license that would get them in trouble. Just because you are a nurse doesn't make you responsible for every patient on a unit so I don't see why that would suddenly be true if you were a nurse working as a tech or secretary. Our techs and secretaries don't have the same computer access as nurses and can't access the pyxis or med carts at all which severly limits an RN hired in one of those capcities to actually do anything for a patient beyond their hired scope. If a patient is in obvious distress, I would hope that anyone, regardless of position, would find them some help.