Resource Center

Social media use is ubiquitous, but inappropriate posts by nurses have resulted in licensure and legal repercussions. NCSBN has developed guidelines for nurses and nursing students for using social media responsibly. Key points of these guidelines are summarized, along with dramatization of potential scenarios of inappropriate social media use.

Uniform Licensure Requirements (ULRs) are the essential prerequisites for initial, endorsement, renewal and reinstatement licensure needed across every NCSBN jurisdiction to ensure the safe and competent practice of nursing. ULRs protect the public by setting consistent standards and promoting a health care system that is fluid and accessible by removing barriers to care and maximizing portability for nurses. They also assure the consumer that a nurse in one state has met the requirements of the nurses in every other state. ULRs support the fact that the expectations for the education of a nurse and the responsibilities of a nurse are the same throughout every NCSBN member board jurisdiction in the United States.

NCSBN's Nursing Education Committee wrote a report on the first year of their work in analyzing and making recommendations for the future of approval by Boards of Nursing. This report was approved in May 2011, by NCSBN's Board of Directors.

NCSBN's Disciplinary Resources Committee studied the increasing use and misuse of social media in health care.

Nurse Practitioners (NPs) are certified within a population-focused specialty area, practice in a variety of settings, and treat a wide range of patients. Little is known about what agreement exists between certification obtained and actual site of practice. The purpose of this study was to examine NP practice sites as compared with their certification and examine additional education they received after employment.

This article discusses the importance of developing a national, standardized program, implemented through regulation, for transitioning all newly licensed nursing graduates to practice. The background for establishing this evidence-based model in the context of today’s health-care arena is presented. A model for transition and the supporting evidence are described.

The Massachusetts Board of Registration in Nursing and the University of Massachusetts Medical School Center for Health Policy and Research convened the Massachusetts Medication Safety Alliance, a 15-member collaborative of regulatory agencies and long-term care providers, to develop the Nurse-Employer Medication Safety Partnership Model to cultivate a safety culture in Massachusetts nursing homes that supports voluntary medication-event recognition and disclosure by nurses. To guide the model's development, the Alliance assessed the perceptions of 1,286 nurses working in 109 Massachusetts nursing homes, finding more than half rated their practice environment as punitive and identified fears of blame, disciplinary action, and lawsuits as barriers to medication-event reporting.

During 2009 and 2010, a survey was administered to hospital, home health, and nursing home nurse employers in the US to capture insights into the professional and practice issues affecting nursing. These key issues were identified: workforce, educational preparation, transition, and patient safety. The implications for regulators, researchers, educators, and employers are discussed.

With changing staffing structures and persistent quality concerns in nursing homes, registered nurses are challenged to ensure that appropriate care is delivered. We describe differences in the nurse practice acts and related administrative code for all 50 states and DC for LPN delegation and supervision. Next, we explore relationships between these differences and quality measures from CMS for US nursing homes, using 2007 data. Findings indicate that how BONs regulate LPN scope of practice is directly related to care quality.

A cross-sectional secondary data analysis was conducted linking nursing work environment data from a 2004 survey of 633 nurses in 71 hospitals in North Carolina and Illinois to hospital-level patient outcomes data based on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality inpatient quality indicators and patient safety indicators. Nurses' job demands and schedules are associated with selected patient outcomes and should be considered as modifiable working conditions, along with staffing, to improve patient care.

The primary purpose of boards of nursing is public protection, but few boards have conducted research with the public's input. This article provides results of a study conducted by the Alabama Board of Nursing regarding the views of 600 consumers on advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs). Less than 20% of participants knew the agency responsible for regulating APRNs, but the expectations for public safety were explicit regarding preparation for practice and competence.

This study represents an initial attempt at exploring the characteristics of graduate programs in nursing for non-nurses (GPNNNs), their students, and real and potential regulatory concerns. The variability in the required number of credits alone is a prompt for educators to examine the most efficient path to a graduate degree for non-nurses. Further, those involved in the design, implementation, and regulation of these programs and the students need to consider the actual and potential regulatory issues that can surface when students without a nursing degree are permitted or required to take the NCLEX after completing pregraduate nursing courses.