Should Continuing Education for Nurses be mandatory in all states?

I hope you re-think letting the certification go-
try the on-line ceu's- like with MedScape.

I do believe they should be mandatory however I also think that half of them should have to be obtained in your speciality area. I also think that Pa has been lax with communicating exactly is required, 30 hours of continuing ed but are they contact hours or CEU's, no information has been sent although license renewals are stating that we must have the 30 hours to renew in 2010.
For retirees, I think 15 is reasonable since most are on a fixed income. There is a nursing shortage as we all know and taking retirees out of the working pull when they help with vaccine clinics, Red Cross drives etc. is going to create another issue.
It is unfortunate that there are people who will just copy answers from another and bet contact hours that way, if I am paying for them I want to gain the knowledge of the article or semianr I am attending.

Hello,
I think the term "mandatory" is what gives a negative feeling to it. It would really be ideal if each individual nurse would just seek out his/her own learning desires appropriate with the nursing specialty he/she practices including medical/surgical nursing. Unfortunately, the only way the public we serve could understand how "good" we nurses are, is through proven educational attainment and how we actually perform those duties and responsibilities required of us as professionals. Obviously, not much is free nowadays.... We do pay for our education.....

It should never be manadated as there is too much big business out there to make money off it. Professional responsibility yes, but the concept of MANDATORY gives me the shivers.

OK Joke Nurse. LoL congratulation for your French.

I personally feel that as we progress towards other professions vewing nursing as a profession, not mandating continuing education would only be to our detriment.

I really come down hard on fence on this. OH, that hurts. I do think some things really need to be mandatory and supplied by the facility.

These things are updating on CDC/state Infection Control issues. I see lots of questions about this here at the website.

Hands on, perhaps group or team approach to Ethics related to facility issues. I don't deal with tissue harvesting so it would not interest me, but there are issues that I deal with lots. Small groups could develop some things to assist all of us. Perhaps end of life issues and the cross cultural aspects of the area.

Drug and Alcohol issues since Many of our patients have these issues and we need to have our minds straight about the disease of addiction.

I agree that the nurses who are motivated will do these things anyway but with proper in-service, perhaps we can drag some others into the fold. I work in a state that demands cont. ed. Most of the staff looks forward to the in-services as the staff really works to include everyone so there are no nappers or chatters. There are real tests, easy but demand more than signing name and checking boxes about the comfort of the surroundings.

Seems to me the problem is not the issue of mandatory but the fact that continued education is sometimes delivered in a factory-like manner. Shovel it in, push them out.

We also have mandatory education requirements for CNAs in this state.

Where I work, there are a lot of lazy people who can't even be bothered to read their emails. A lot of practice and plocy changes are communicated that way, but months after the emails come out there are many nurses who ares till doing it the old way. If I say something to them like, "We're doing it this way now", I often hear, "Since when? I didn't know that". A number of changes that have been made that people aren't following make more work for the nurse who takes over for them because it has to be redone the correct way. I spent more than an hour today going through a patient's chart making sure that the med orders were all up-to-date because the patient had a bin full of meds that were no longer being given. I think I have better uses for my time.

When I think of these same people keeping current with their nursing knowledge base, I have serious doubts. I'm always reading journals, discussing issues with others, attending conferences and researching diseases and disorders I've never encountered before. Not them. They're sitting around on nights reading Harry Potter.

For those who have expressed the concern over the high cost of obtaining CEU's yes the cost of attending can be costly. Fortunately as CEU's are mandatory in our state our employer pays to attend the ones we apply for in most cases. For those who's employers do not or are retired, There are many CEU'S which can be obtained online some are free, some web sites are a one time nominal fee to obtain as many as you want within a one year time frame.

I was surprised when I learned that nurses were not required to complete continuing education requirements in order to stay licensed. As a medic I was required to complete mandtory hours of continuing ed in order to keep my certification, it would only seem logical that nurses have the same requirement. Without continuing ed, how do our nurses keep up to date, and how do healthcare facilities ensure that the nurses they are hiring are accurately trained and current with new procedures, policies, meds, etc.....?