should ok require nurses to have CEU's

I am not an OK nurse, but I do have an opinion (and some experience) on this subject -- I remember when I was growing up, my father, an MD, talking about the new (at that time) requirement in our home state that MDs have a certain # of continuing ed credits for license renewal. His comment at the time was that the requirement was pointless because the MDs who care about staying informed & current and moving ahead professionally will do so, whether it is required of them or not, and, for the MDs who didn't care about doing so, having a cont ed requirement wouldn't change their attitude and they would simply find the easiest way to meet the requirement on paper. Fast forward many years; I end up an RN and, after practicing for many years in a state with no CE requirement for RNs, I move to state that does have a requirement for licensure renewal. It was no hardship for me, since I have been active in professional organizations & activities throughout my career, and have always earned more CE credits in a year than my new state required, but I remembered what Dad used to say about requiring CE credits, and was v. interested in seeing how it played out in real life. Well, what I observed was exactly what Dad had said. The requirement worked out to 12 hours per year; every hospital in my community (and I assume the same was true elsewhere in the state) offered a 1-hour inservice each month (multiple times, on all shifts, to make it as easy as possible for any nurse who wanted to to attend). Most of the nurses would simply go to the 1-hour inservice (on the clock) and get their little credit each month, regardless of whether the topic had anything whatsoever to do with their area of practice and, hey presto! Requirement for license renewal met! I went to some of the in-house inservices early one (the ones on topics that applied to me) and you would see many of the attendees reading magazines, books, etc. or engaged in some other activity that made it clear they weren't even listening, but no one really cared about that (since it was all about going through the motions anyway). Meanwhile, the nurses who were actually committed to staying current in our fields and expanding our skills and understanding continued to go to the "real" continuing education offerings, professional conferences & conventions, etc., that we had been attending even before we were required to.

So, call me a cynic, but my opinion is that having a CE requirement is an empty gesture that accomplishes little. The emperor ain't wearing much ...