The State Board of Education will take a second look at proposed certification rules for school nurses after some raised concerns that the new regulations could significantly hamper recruitment.
Right now, to work in a New Hampshire school, a registered nurse needs to be licensed by the Nursing Board, which only requires an associate degree. House Bill 1193, which was signed into law last summer, would toughen standards. Under the new statute, school nurses will need to be certified by the State Board of Education, have a bachelor’s degree and three years of experience in pediatric nursing or a related field.
The New Hampshire School Nurses’ Association has endorsed the changes, and several current and former school nurses attended the board’s meeting Thurday to voice support for the rules the state board has proposed for implementing the law.
HB 1193 allows nurses that were employed on or before July 1, 2016, to be grandfathered and skip the new requirements. But Laurie Fleming, a school nurse at Gilbert H. Hood Middle School in Derry, said she was going back for her master’s degree anyway.
“As a parent of a child with a significant seizure disorder, I expect the school nurse to know what she’s doing,” Fleming said. “If all school nurses just gave out Band-Aids and dealt with emergencies or checked for lice, anybody with CPR and first-aid could do the job.”
But Tim Soucy, the public health director for Manchester – whose department is the largest employer of school nurses in the state – said the new law and the rules the board was considering could get in the way of finding staff.
“These proposed rules will dramatically impact our ability to recruit and hire school nurses, will create an unnecessary bureaucracy for existing and future nurses – as well as their employers – and will require nurses to pay two licensing fees and incur additional financial liabilities,” he said.
Meanwhile, the state faces a nursing shortfall across industries – in health care, elder care, and in schools.
“We asked each witness if they would be willing to participate in a stakeholder’s group that would resolve the issues. And they all agreed to do that,” board member Bill Duncan said.
That group will help refine the draft rules before they’re resubmitted to the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules.
It’s unclear how much leeway the board will have to make certification easier. The law itself asks for a bachelor’s degree and three years experience.
“Some fundamentals that concern people are in the law. There’s a limit to how much we can change,” Duncan said. “(But) it looks to me that the rules go quite a bit further than simply restating the statute.”