Editing RN Scope of Practice (section)

== Overview ==

The RN is a licensed independent practitioner within the domain of nursing. "Independent" here does not mean practicing without a provider, prescriber, or care team. It means that the RN is personally accountable for exercising nursing judgment: deciding what to assess, interpreting the findings, identifying nursing problems, planning and prioritizing interventions, and evaluating whether the plan worked. That judgment function is the defining feature of the RN role and is the reason a large share of licensure exam questions ask the candidate to decide what the nurse should do first, next, or not at all.

Three overlapping sources set the boundaries of any given RN's practice:

* '''Law and regulation.''' The state nurse practice act and the rules the board of nursing writes under it.
* '''Professional standards.''' National standards of practice, such as those published by the American Nurses Association (ANA, 2021), and specialty standards.
* '''Institutional policy and individual competence.''' The employer's policies, position descriptions, and validated competencies.

A useful study rule is that the narrowest of these three governs. A task that is legal under the state nurse practice act but prohibited by employer policy, or that the individual nurse has never been trained to perform, is outside that nurse's practice.