The recent CA BRN changes have been increasingly mentioned in public comments at BRN meetings. What the heck am I referring to?
The CA BRN diversion program has recently made changes to their rules on nurse participants without warning or explanation. If you are currently on diversion (formerly known as intervention) this will affect you.
In recent BRN meetings, which are generally open to the public, portions are closed to the public for confidentiality reasons, nurses, lawyers and BRN support group moderators have been speaking out about changes to the diversion program.
Nurses who were months, weeks or days away from completing their diversion programs are being told that they must work a minimum of 6 months passing narcotics before they will be considered safe to complete the program. Before this recent rule change which purportedly began around December, nurses in early 2023 were informed that THEY would not be released from the diversion program unless they worked a minimum of 6 months in an approved RN role.
Many nurses joined the Diversion program prior to November 2023 when these rules were not in effect. These nurses were not grandfathered into their contracts and many nurses were presented new contracts with no options but to accept the new terms of the BRN's contract or risk immediate removal from the program and start at the beginning of a probation process after months or years of compliance with the diversion program run by Maximus.
If you are currently in diversion, or you have previously completed the diversion program, please watch the archived BRN meetings since December.
The archived meetings can be accessed at https://www.RN.ca.gov/consumers/webcasts.shtml.
I highly suggest you watch the BRN meeting on February 28. There were many complaints brought up with the nursing board.
This issue will tentatively be an agenda line item discussed at the May BRN meeting.
The public is allowed to attend all open sessions of BRN meetings.
Please share this in your BRN Nursing Support groups and encourage every diversion nurse and support group moderator you know to attend future meetings.
The program has become a perfect example of abuse of power. Let's do it!
It's that way because in our profession, emotion so often rules the day to make decisions over evidence. Emotion isn't all bad by any means because who are the front line people that has to show emotion such as true compassion, caring, patient advocacy and we've done it for over 100 years. We are the best innthe world at it as a profession. Where it becomes an issue is when we develop more as a profession and the boom in technology, data, evidence, research that help guide decisions. So, we have to have the compassion and caring emotional based hat on because WE SHOULD (its who we are). But we must also put on our science/data hats as a profession and it's not easy to do as a profession as a whole.
Look at Medical Boards (Physician monitoring programs). They are alarmingly standardized compared to us when looking at all 50 states. Thr mentality is protection of the public, but it truly is getting the physician back to practice and actually helping the physician instead of the so common punitive nature of BONs. The physicians have data/science/going by the latest research in the blood, so trying to convince a State Board of Medicine on newest available data and research is simple because they understand that language and all physicians are trained in some form of graduate level research in medical school, so the Board of Medicine understands this research language. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to BON members across the country who have told me, "those Doctors just take care of each other and their monitoring programs are too easy and let them off to easy." Now, what do you do with a foolish statement like this? It shows the difference in our culture and physician culture. OF COURSE they take care of each other and SO SHOULD WE! When I hear the statement by a BON member that the physician monitoring programs are "letting them off to easy." It implies one thing.....it implies thst the nurse who makes that statement has a knowledge deficit and doesn't understand that the medical Board monitoring programs are going by data, not Emotion, but the nurse simply can't grasp it when told this. They get defensive and double down, commit to more punishment
For BONs, you have many RNs who have never even taken a basic research class, much less graduate level research. When these Boards are approached with best evidence and proof they are being far to punitive, there is a certain level of knowledge deficit and they just can't grasp it in some cases and we get what we have now. It's like pulling teeth. They simply don't have the training, education, or culture to truly grasp best available data and apply that to what a monitoring program and consent order should look like.
When is something going to change? What can we do ? I feel so powerless!
I left my full time dialysis clinic 15 minutes away for a hospital over an hour away!
All of these brave people speaking out in the BRN meetings and nothing has been done! They are still taking people off work for 30 days for 1 dilute test even though Dolores seemed so upset by that in the June 21st meeting.
I am so tired of being in the program. All I want is to put the past behind me and move forward with the coping skills I have gained, no thanks to this program but to myself and all the hard work I have done.
Seems to me like the BRN lawyer has a financial stake in this. He speaks out when participants share to "clarify" and protect maximus/brn. Maximus's contract is up for renewal for something like 12million dollars. Where does that money go ? They aren't using it for our recovery or to pay staff; there's one case manager for the entire central valley.
I believe that they are extending as many of as they can so that when times comes for the contract renewal they will have enough participants to make a giant profit off of us. On top of that the BRN pays them for each participant.
The attorney is a joke! His online reviews from working in private practice (that have somehow disappeared) said it all as to why he is now at the BRN. 🤣
I was soooo disheartened and bummed last meeting when they had speaker after speaker talking about what was really going on in the program despite what they've been told by you know who. And they still elected to do literally nothing. The next meeting is tomorrow...I'm praying they actually do something. And yes that lawyer is an absolute joke
The attorney is a joke! His online reviews from working in private practice (that have somehow disappeared) said it all as to why he is now at the BRN. 🤣
What is happening to you folks in California is sickening. I feel bad for you.
I can say this which is within the rules. The lawyer for the Nurse Boards represents the Nurse Boards and that is his client, not nurses in recovery and that's not legal advice, that's simply stating a fact.
Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).
S3ms3m said:
When is something going to change? What can we do ? I feel so powerless!
It sounds like a truely awful situation. When I was in CA Diversion over 20 years ago the program was difficult and expensive but honest. I quoted the above because I wanted to point out that admitting to powerlessness is one of the tenants of 12 step programs. If you do anything outside an admission of powerlessness and absolute compliance you will be labeled as having relapse behavior. I honestly think the program is designed to tear you down and make life so stressful so as to push a person to relapse. They want to seek if you will break!
I am not sure how the programs work anymore but if you are in Diversion can you drop out and go into probation? It used to be less restrictive but left a permanant blemish on your license. I think if I had had to go through what current participants are going through I would have just quit nursing.
To answer your question, you absolutely can NOT simply go on probation. You are already on probation while in the program/monitoring and if someone drops out of monitoring, the license is suspended and on occasion, revoked. There is a permanent blemish on everyone's license nowadays even AFTER the 2, 3, 4, or 5 year program is done and the license is reinstated as being "unencumbered." Another state or hospital can still see that the nurse has a blemish in MOST cases, Not All cases. For those that enter monitoring on their own/without the Board referring them do not have a permanent mark, but how many people do this and enter on their own? Very fee. Sometimes, the nurse board does Not make the discipline public as long as the nurse is compliant in monitoring and complete the program, but again, most of the time, the nurse board makes the discipline/probation or whatever one chooses to call it as Public and that's for life for anyone to see.
But sometimes and in some circumstances, completing monitoring/consent agreement does Not get made public, but more times than not, if the BON feels a nurse has done something thst rises to the level of requiring monitoring, it gets made public.
Steven Thompson
73 Posts
It's that way because in our profession, emotion so often rules the day to make decisions over evidence. Emotion isn't all bad by any means because who are the front line people that has to show emotion such as true compassion, caring, patient advocacy and we've done it for over 100 years. We are the best innthe world at it as a profession. Where it becomes an issue is when we develop more as a profession and the boom in technology, data, evidence, research that help guide decisions. So, we have to have the compassion and caring emotional based hat on because WE SHOULD (its who we are). But we must also put on our science/data hats as a profession and it's not easy to do as a profession as a whole.
Look at Medical Boards (Physician monitoring programs). They are alarmingly standardized compared to us when looking at all 50 states. Thr mentality is protection of the public, but it truly is getting the physician back to practice and actually helping the physician instead of the so common punitive nature of BONs. The physicians have data/science/going by the latest research in the blood, so trying to convince a State Board of Medicine on newest available data and research is simple because they understand that language and all physicians are trained in some form of graduate level research in medical school, so the Board of Medicine understands this research language. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to BON members across the country who have told me, "those Doctors just take care of each other and their monitoring programs are too easy and let them off to easy." Now, what do you do with a foolish statement like this? It shows the difference in our culture and physician culture. OF COURSE they take care of each other and SO SHOULD WE! When I hear the statement by a BON member that the physician monitoring programs are "letting them off to easy." It implies one thing.....it implies thst the nurse who makes that statement has a knowledge deficit and doesn't understand that the medical Board monitoring programs are going by data, not Emotion, but the nurse simply can't grasp it when told this. They get defensive and double down, commit to more punishment
For BONs, you have many RNs who have never even taken a basic research class, much less graduate level research. When these Boards are approached with best evidence and proof they are being far to punitive, there is a certain level of knowledge deficit and they just can't grasp it in some cases and we get what we have now. It's like pulling teeth. They simply don't have the training, education, or culture to truly grasp best available data and apply that to what a monitoring program and consent order should look like.