Registered Nurses

Rockie · July 2001

I am still wrestling with a major problem as to the status of registered nurses. I have surveyed upteen dozen organizations and cannot find a good answer except for California which has mandated by law that their RNs be designated non-exempt.

I inherited a problem where RNs in our medical practice have been classified as exempt. The biggest problem is the part time RNs are classified as hourly. According to Wage & Hour, it has to be one way or the other. Prior to my working here, my only experience with RNs was in the hospital arena and they were classified as non-exempt, except for managerial nurses.

I desperately want to get this corrected so I don't feel I have a potential Wage & Hour issue hanging over my head.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Down_the_Middle · July 2001

My experience of working with RN's for many years and being in numerous states, is that the local market actually determines the status of those RN's. Altho I've seen RN's classified as exempt, 99% of what I've experienced is that they are non-exempt and the reason for that is probably that each health facility needed to be consistent with one another to maintain competitiveness. Most labor unions bargain hard for RN's to have N/E status and I suspect this has just "trickled down". I think the strongest argument for how you classify RN's s/b what is needed to maintain your local market competitiveness and your ability to recruit and retain.

TheCol · July 2001

My answer would be in the use of job description. The level of independent authority for that job could be specified. The tendency to make RN's exempt by virtue of their higher skill coupled with independent decision making and perhaps direct supervisory responsibility over -say a Medical Assistant or Orderly would allow "Exempt". Contrarily, a uniformed medical worker with none of the preceding would not be Exempt solely because of his or her certification. Like -- a lawyer who is a house painter is non-exempt. (Not a bad concept!)

Brad Forrister · July 2001

TheCol hits the nail on the head. Our newsletter archive shows several articles on the exempt status of RNs. They're in that gray area for "professionals" - whether you're entitled to treat them as exempt depends on how much discretion and independent judgment the nurses employ in their work. Obviously, if they're supervisory, they're entitled to the exemption. If their work is very independent - home health care nurses, for instance - they'd be exempt.

If the part-time RNs have a different level of responsibility from the full-time ones, and if you can clarify that in their job descriptions, you could justify the disparate treatment.

Down_the_Middle · July 2001

Rockie:
For whatever it may be worth......... Knowing RN's and the healthcare industry as I do, I've seen very few non-supervisory RN's who can truly satisfy the independent judgment and discretionary thinking requirement to be exempt. Western medicine does not currently allow RN's to venture too far out-of-the-box without an MD's approval and state boards of nrsg also frown on deviating from practice standards. My RN's in psych, home health and hospice are about as "independent" as you can get and they are clearly non-exempt.

Rockie · July 2001

Thanks Down the Middle!

I appreciate your input.

Registered Nurses

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