Aug 22+23, 05: Hearings at Temple Univ. Philadelphia for Package of Nursing Bills

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

legislative alert- "package of nursing bills"

hearings are going to be held at templeuniversity on august 22 and 23, 2005 on a "package of nursing bills". the package includes:

• house bills 40 and 47 which would grant reciprocity to rn's and lpn's educated in puerto rico, mandate the nclex be conducted in spanish and mandate the state board of nursing issue a certification without exam to registered nurse practitioners who have completed a course of study considered by the board to be equivalent to that required by pa or who is/are licensed or certified by another state, territory or possession of the us or foreign country which licensure or certification requirements are deemed equivalent to pa certification requirements.
  

• house bill 1063 which would grant title recognition to clinical nurse specialists in pa and define their scope of practice and;
  

• house bill 1810 (nurse registry act) which mandates health care facilities to report to the department of health any misconduct and/or terminations of lpn's or rn's in pa. this information will be kept in a registry and made available to the public over the internet.
  

currently the pa state nurses association's cultural diversity committee is working on a position statement that addresses foreign nurses coming into pa thus pa nurses is silent on house bills 40 & 47 bill at this moment. this is a very complex issue and demands much thought and investigation.

pa state nurses is strongly supporting house bill 1063 and ask all of you to click onto the legislative center (http://www.panurses.org) and send an email to your representative strongly urging their support for this bill. the clinical nurse specialists need your support on this bill.

we want to hear from you about your thoughts on house bill 1810.

please direct email responses to [color=#336699][email protected]. we urge you to review this bill as it has large ramifications for the nursing community.

to review each bill, please click on the respective hyperlink:

hb 40: [color=#336699]http://www.panurses.org/pdf/hb40.pdf

hb 1063: [color=#336699]http://www.panurses.org/pdf/hb1063.pdf

hb 1810: [color=#336699]http://www.panurses.org/pdf/hb1810.pdf