Editorial: Nursing overhaul meets its demise

Tuesday, May 26, 1998 | 12:04 p.m.

LET'S hope that the state Nursing Board accepts an advisory panel's recommendation to reject a nursing deregulation plan.

The roundly criticized plan would have allowed unlicensed people to perform nursing duties. For example, the proposed regulation change would have allowed a medical facility to let its chief nurse require that a registered nurse delegate her duties to an unlicensed person.

The regulation didn't end there, however. Under the proposal, neither the medical facility nor its chief nurse could be held negligent, but the registered nurse who delegated the duties would be held responsible.

During the contentious debate over the proposal, Scott Simpson, a registered nurse, was right on target with this remark: "Why do you want to dilute the nursing pool with unskilled people? Professional nurses don't want this, health maintenance organizations don't want it, and the public doesn't want it."

Ultimately, the Nursing Practice Advisory Committee, meeting in Sparks on Wednesday, shot down the controversial plan. Vicki Means, the state Nursing Board's information officer, said that after hearing all the testimony, the board's executive director felt it was better to table this. Means told Sun reporter Art Nadler that as of July 1, no more regulation changes will be introduced for at least one year.

Executive branch agencies and state boards do need to have flexibility to enact regulations to carry out their duties, especially when the law is unclear or leaves the discretion up to an agency to create needed guidelines. The danger with the Nursing Board's proposals was that they were poised to create a substantive policy change that was better left to be addressed by the governor and the Legislature.

People have grown weary of attempts by HMOs and medical facilities to cut costs by reducing the care for patients. Anyone who has ever been hospitalized or needed any type of medical care understands that nurses play a pivotal role in helping people get well again. Nurses should be treated with dignity; the public won't stand for anything less.