Posted: September 7th, 2024

Professional Nursing and State Level Regulation

Professional Nursing and State Level Regulation
All 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as federal agencies, offer healthcare recommendations to their citizens. Registered nurses (RNs) in every state are afforded the guidelines in the Constitution when it comes to establishing the scope of their practice and the rules by which they must abide. Because of this, it’s possible that practitioners in different states will employ different strategies. The Nursing Practices Act (NPA)gives each state’s Board of Nursing (BON) the authority to establish and enforce minimum requirements for the practice of nursing within that state. The National Nursing Council (NCSBN) agrees with the State Boards of Nursing in their efforts to enforce national NPA compliance. These recommendations are intended to regulate insecure patient care practices for the benefit of the public. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to establish and maintain a system for verifying nursing schools, issuing licenses to qualified graduates, and enforcing nursing laws (Chapman et al., 2019). We’ll compare and contrast different nursing advice and discuss how nursing committees have made a difference in the field.
The states I will focus on are Virginia and Washington which have vastly different legal frameworks. While APRNs’ scope of practice is restricted in some states like Virginia, in others like Washington, they have full latitude to do their jobs. In order to perform its function, an APRN in Virginia must be supervised by a physician, while in Washington, residents bear the primary obligation to provide care to patients without any such constraints. A doctor or other medical professional can do whatever he or she wants in the state of Washington, but in the state of Virginia, they are required to get permission first before trying out any unproven procedures.
Dispensing medications, especially controlled substances, is another area where these two jurisdictions diverge. When it comes to substances that can be controlled, the APRN in Virginia has rules in place. Schedule II and VI drugs are within their purview, but they must coordinate their prescribing practices and patient care teams with other doctors involved in the patient’s care. However, in Washington, the APRN can prescribe Schedule V drugs under the Uniform Controlled Substances Act after getting approval from the state’s Patient Care Committee. The training requirements for an APRN in Virginia include 8 hours in pharmacology, 2 of which must be specific to the administration of controlled substances (State Practice Environment, n.d). In contrast, Washington’s APRNs only need to complete 15 hours of pharmacology during each renewal period, with no mention of the time set aside for the controlled substance.
Maintaining the appropriate authority and certification that the state has established is necessary for compliance with government regulations governing the prescription of drugs, including controlled drugs, and the practice of law under restricted or unrestricted laws. To avoid problems that may arise from policy violations, APRN recommends that nurses successfully complete the requirements of the state in which they intend to work, obtain a license as directed by the State Nursing Committee, and pass the relevant exams (Smith et al., 2022). In states like Washington, where they are legally allowed to do so, APRNs are an integral part of delivering high-quality primary care to the state’s most marginalized residents. There is a reduction in the use of emergency rooms, hospital stays, preventative and maintenance care, and the cost of drugs in states where APRNs are regulated by a recognized agency (FPA). Fewer people will die from overdoses, and that’s just one of the advantages (Bosse et al., 2017). By 2025, many underserved patients will have tried to gain access to primary health care despite the fact that many APRNs have been barred from performing restricted work as part of their education and training. Everybody loses out in this scenario. It is predicted that the United States will experience a severe shortage of primary care physicians (Neff et al., 2018). Since not all jurisdictions grant APRNs the authority to act as primary caregivers, despite the fact that doing so would be in the public interest, to ensure that their employees carry out their responsibilities in a way that is in line with applicable government regulations, practitioners must keep in place an accurate legal framework governing their operations.
Nursing practice is profoundly influenced by the fundamental guidelines of NPA and BON. For example, Florida only has a small number of active practitioners. As a result, nurses must always report to a superior in their line of work. In comparison, practice in its entirety is legal in Alaska. This allows nurses to prescribe, diagnose, and treat patients independently of a doctor (Smith et al., 2022). By enforcing legal repercussions for violators of council regulations, medical misconduct can be mitigated. Avoidable actions are also spelled out in detail in anti-fraud regulations. Therefore, the purpose of nursing guidance can be realized. State-level studies of practitioner practice have shown that states with more opportunities for practice saw an increase in the number of licensed nurses (Chapman et al., 2019). When it comes to exams, licenses, and renewals for registered nurses, all recommendations must adhere to standards for nursing best practices. They must also conduct probes into allegations of illegal behavior in the field of nursing.
References
Bosse, J., Simmonds, K., Hanson, C., Pulcini, J., Dunphy, L., Vanhook, P., & Poghosyan, L. (2017). Position statement: Full practice authority for advanced practice registered nurses is necessary to transform primary care. Nursing outlook, 65(6), 761-765.
Chapman, S. A., Toretsky, C., & Phoenix, B. J. (2019). Enhancing psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner practice: impact of state scope of practice regulations. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 10(1), 35-43.
Smith, L. B. (2022). The effect of nurse practitioner scope of practice laws on primary care delivery. Health Economics, 31(1), 21-41.
State Practice Environment. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.aanp.org/advocacy/state/state-practice-environment
Neff, D. F., Yoon, S. H., Steiner, R. L., Bejleri, I., Bumbach, M. D., Everhart, D., & Harman, J. S. (2018). The impact of nurse practitioner regulations on population access to care. Nursing outlook, 66(4), 379-385

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