Question by You N: What are the job duties of a nurse practitioner and rn?
is nurse practioner more of a cushion job……i know they write prescriptions…but yeah do they clean up just like rn’s? jw

Best answer:

Answer by Jill
RNs do a lot more than just “clean up”. While we do have a fair amount of cleaning up to do, in some cases there is often not much cleaning up to do at all, as that sort of thing is very often the responsibility of assistive personel like nursing assistants.

An RN is responsible for performing physical, mental, social, and environmental assessments, prioritizing patient needs, creating nursing diagnoses, creating care plans that identify patient outcomes and interventions designed to meet those outcomes. They have to have a thorough knowledge of anatomy, physiology, disease process, etc., and to be able to interpret lab results, etc., and know how to manage the patient’s care in relation to their unique conditions. The RN has to educate the patient on their conditions, treatment plans, etc. The nurse also has to coordinate care from multiple professions – social services, pharmacists, lab techs, nutritionists, physical therapists, etc.

Nursing practice is a profession based on research and evidence. It’s not just about taking vital signs and passing pills and wiping butt. We hold a high level of legal responsibility and at all times are accountable for the quality of the care the patient receives.

A NP does all the same things, but has a higher level of education in a specialty area and does function more at the level of a doctor, including being a primary care provider in a clinic. NPs also work for hospitals and would round on patients to monitor their progress, contribute to the plan of care, write orders, etc. but they are not in the position of the “bedside nurse” or “staff nurse” who is immediately caring for that patient for a full 8 hour shift and doing all those direct duties like performing assessment, giving meds, doing wound care, etc.

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