The California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) has announced its Strategic Plan for 2022-2025. They use this plan to guide the direction they want to go and measure how successful they are at reaching their goals. So let’s examine how their plan will affect you and your work.
Licensing Changes
Good news here! The Board aims to reduce the time it takes to process licensing requests and wants to make the process more affordable (while maintaining “fiscal solvency”).
Here are their full goals regarding licensing:
- Reduce license processing times to improve access and customer satisfaction.
- Enhance stakeholder accessibility to and communication with the BRN to improve customer satisfaction.
- Analyze and ensure fees are reasonable and align with other states/boards to ensure BRN fiscal solvency while ensuring affordability to applicants and licensees.
- Improve the process for licensing by endorsement to make it more timely and cost-effective while maintaining low application fees
Enforcement Changes
When it comes to enforcement, the big takeaway is they plan to review their approach to discipline. Their two goals around enforcement are:
- Align the enforcement processing times with the Board’s efforts to ensure safe nurses continue to practice.
- Review the Board’s discipline approach to ensure it is evidence-based and effective to protect the public.
Now is a good time to remind you that if you ever find yourself on the wrong end of an investigation, we strongly discourage you from surrendering your license. Often you are told that if you surrender your license, you can simply petition for reinstatement. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done. We don’t recommend it.
Also, if you ever receive an intervention letter stating you should enroll in an intervention program, we don’t recommend that either. If you do, your license will be immediately revoked.
Expect an Increase in Audits
The Board sets continuing education standards with the goal of ensuring ongoing nursing competency. In their new strategic plan, the big takeaway here for registered nurses is that they aim to increase audits. Their exact goals here are as follows:
- Increase audits of RNs and education providers to ensure compliance with continuing education requirements.
- Analyze, and update if needed, ways to improve the continuing education reporting process to streamline and improve customer service.
Other Items Registered Nurses Need to Know
The CA BRN’s new strategic plan also has goals centered around educational oversight, laws and regulations, organizational development, and outreach.
Educational Oversight
The Board establishes the set of standards regarding continuing education. Their new strategic plan aims to align “educational oversight activities” with nationally accredited programs. They also plan to identify redundancies and reduce them. Additional goals include equity, workforce needs, and evaluating educational requirements.
Laws and Regulations
The Board does have the authority to enforce specific laws, establish regulations, and advocate for legislation. Their new plan states goals around ensuring all stakeholder voices are heard, statutes are reviewed, and regulations are reviewed and revised as necessary, all to align with today’s best practices.
The Board’s Strategic Planning Process
According to the Board, “The California Department of Consumer Affairs’ SOLID Planning unit conducted an environmental scan of the internal and external environments…” They did this through interviews with board members and executive management and online surveys sent to board staff and committee members. They say they then used this information to review their mission, vision, and values and form their goals for this new strategic plan.
Navigating the BRN
When it comes to navigating the BRN, you need a guide! Don’t leave your license up to chance. If you ever find yourself in the “sights” of the BRN, go in armed with RN Guardian. Our passion and focus is protecting nurse’s licenses and nurse’s licenses alone, and our attorneys’ sole purpose is to save yours. With a 98% success rate, we’ve got you covered!