SB 49: CON: Bill will not end shortage

Senate Bill 49 would set back the high nursing education standards we have fought so hard to achieve in Georgia. We should be elevating the standards of the nursing profession, not lowering them. In its present form, SB 49 actually says that applicants entering nursing programs can be a licensed practical nurse, military service corpsman or paramedic. While these students may have had significant health care experience, they have never had a registered nurse education course, but will qualify to be licensed as an RN.

Excelsior College School of Nursing, for example, offers a self-study module that is completed by students without meaningful clinical rotations of hands-on experience with real patients. These students do not receive the many hours of supervised nursing clinical experience required by other board-sanctioned traditional and nontraditional programs. Instead, they undergo 2 1/2 days of monitored clinical experience during which a checkoff list is used to assess nursing competency.

SB 49 will also limit and restrict the nursing board’s ability to regulate the current standards met by nursing education programs in Georgia. This bill will require extensive changes to the board’s rules on nursing education. Such changes will allow programs to enter Georgia that have never before met Georgia’s high nursing education standards. The bill eliminates critical standards in place for nursing education.

The background of SB 49 has to do with a recent change in the law. HB 1041, enacted in 2008, closed a loophole in the Nurse Practice Act by raising the education standards of RNs coming to Georgia from other states so that all Georgia licensed RNs meet similar and equivalent nursing education requirements. SB 49 will now change that standard and allow RNs who are applying for initial licensure or licensure by endorsement to be licensed as RNs in Georgia with lower educational standards.

The Georgia Nurses Association supports this bill. There are more than 110,000 RNs in Georgia, but less than 3 percent of them belong to GNA. GNA does not speak for the majority of nurses. GNA conducts the required 2 1/2-day clinical competency testing at a cost of $1,800 per student. This money provides the majority of GNA’s operating income.

SB 49 will not eliminate the nursing shortage we are in today. The solution is not to lower the standards of nursing, but to maintain and improve our existing educational standards through providing more faculty in nursing board-approved programs and more clinical sites for programs that already exist.

The Georgia Board of Nursing is not opposed to innovation and nontraditional programs. Georgia has hybrid programs for LPNs and paramedics, and generic master’s degree programs. But all these programs currently meet our high educational standards. We cannot compromise on competency and excellence in nursing education. There is too much at stake for the health and welfare of our Georgia citizens.

The Georgia Board of Nursing has been charged with protection of the public. When I speak to health care consumers throughout Georgia about how SB 49 will impact nursing they are absolutely appalled.

Let’s leave the responsibility of determining the standards of education to the Georgia Board of Nursing, not the legislators.

• Dee Keeton, a registered nurse, is president of the Georgia Board of Nursing.