We recently posted about issues relating to “travel nurses,” nurses who travel to a hospital in another state to fill in when needed because of nurse absences. This trend has accelerated during the COVID-19 crisis, when there was a shortage of certain nurse specialties, such as ER and ICU nurses. In most cases, the nurses are provided by a placement agency and work for periods of time ranging from a month to as much as a year. The blog post pointed out some of the liability issues that can arise in this situation.

A recent article in the Daily Nurse publication looked at this from the viewpoint of the visiting nurse. There can be issues relating to licensing, liability insurance, assignments, and “scope of practice” nursing statutes that vary from state to state. Travel nurses are urged to make sure that these issues are resolved before taking the job. Nurses have complained that they were not trained in terms of particular practices or procedures in the new hospital, and sometimes were directed to provide are for which they were not trained, such as an ER nurse being assigned to an ICU. The nurses were advised to speak up and insist that their contracts be adhered to. A specific concern is that the former state’s “scope of practice” laws may be more restrictive than that of the new state, and a nurse may be unwilling to perform specific care acts that would not have been allowed in their former hospitals.  

All of this emphasizes that in any case involving hospital nursing care, it is imperative that the claimant’s attorney determine whether a nurse was a “travel nurse” and how long they have worked at the new hospital, how much training and orientation they received, and whether the care they provided may have been not allowed by the new hospital’s “scope of practice.”