Legal Question in Health Care Law in Mississippi

Re: limit scope of practice of nurse anesthetist

If you feel strongly, let the hospital do your bidding. Take it up through the chain of command and ask them to restore your scope of practice. However, remember, if the clinical director has given this task to the surgeon, it means that you are relieved of the responsiblity to monitor and control body temperature at least from the blanket perspective. If you don't monitor that, you still have to monitor the body temp because of malignant hyperthermia, so you're actually splitting the clinical baby by giving one piece to the surgeon and leaving the other with the CRNA. It makes for bad clinical care because the natural assumption on the surgeon's part is going to be, if there was something wrong, the CRNA would tell me. But if she isn't controlling the blanket and monitoring the temp, she can't tell him.

I would draft a memo to your Risk Manager and lay out your risk concerns at this clinic, explain the horribles that could occur, and then take it from there.