California makes concession for nursing students after coronavirus affects training access
The director of the Department of Consumer Affairs waived rules on the clinical hours that nursing students must complete after many hospitals suspended their on-the-job training programs in preparation for a surge of patients sickened by the new coronavirus.
Consumer Affairs Director Kimberly Kirchmeyer said: “We are sympathetic to the predicament nursing students are in during this time of uncertainty. It was necessary to waive these requirements to meet the ongoing needs of California’s health care system and allow nursing students to graduate on time.”
In an executive order issued Mar. 4, Gov. Gavin Newsom gave the leaders of public health, consumer affairs, emergency medical services, radiologic technologists and several other licensing agencies the authority to suspend certain requirements during the state of emergency.
COVID-19, the respiratory illness, caused by the new coronavirus, has upended virtually all aspects of the nation’s way of life, from visiting state parks to how students are educated as the state and nation try to reduce the number of critically ill patients in hospitals. A number of those hospitalized patients will require greater attention from one nurse than most patients typically do because their condition has to be monitored closely.
Carel Mountain, the director of nursing at Sacramento City College, said her school’s clinical partners are gearing up for a tsunami of COVID-19 patients.
“The students can be a help to them,” she said of the partners, “but the students also take work. And it’s one more person coming into the facilities who could possibly be COVID-positive. All those things play into the facilities being able to host us.”
Newsom noted in the order that he was providing more latitude to Consumer Affairs and other departments because the COVID-19 response will require “an increase in the healthcare workforce such as nurses, doctors, medical assistants, and emergency medical technicians.“
The Consumer Affairs Department oversees the Board of Registered Nursing, the body that licenses and regulates nursing. In a news release, Kirchmeyer said the decision will affect roughly 9,000 nursing students who had been working to complete their clinical training hours.
Ryane Panasewicz, a nursing student at West Coast University, said that she and other nursing students have been pushing for a concession for a month. Many students, however, still have questions about what will happen to them if they were not at the graduation mark, she said.
“Is this issue just going to push them back because they really don’t know how long they will be out of the hospital for? Will this issue just compound for second-semester students?” she asked.
Mountain said she’s been hearing some very negative things about the Board of Registered Nursing, but she’s applauding the flexibility of both the Department of Consumer Affairs and the BRN. The Consumer Affairs announcement increases flexibility, she said, and she does not anticipate any problems helping students to meet the BRN standards.
The DCA waiver automatically reduces the proportion of clinical hours that students must spend in direct patient contact to 50 percent from 75 percent for nursing students in obstetrics, pediatrics, and mental health/psychiatric rotations.
Students in geriatrics and medical-surgical courses can complete up to 50 percent of patient care through simulation or lab training, if certain conditions are met. One condition, for instance, requires that schools demonstrate that their students were truly displaced , and another provision requires that schools demonstrate that they cannot find alternative sites where students can complete hours in direct patient care.
Panasewicz, a graduating senior, said the conditions seem subjective and do not offer a great degree of certainty.
“A lot of students are posting that they are uncertain how they are going to get their hours still, even with this waiver in place if the hospitals don’t let us back in because we still need up to 50 percent of direct patient contact,” the 27-year-old Panasewicz said. “Where do we get that 50 percent patient contact if hospitals are still closed to us in May?”
Nursing schools will independently determine how to meet the BRN requirements because all the schools have different curriculums, Mountain said, but the schools in the Sacramento region are working collaboratively and creatively to ensure students get their learning needs met.
“Many programs are going to be able to move their first-semester students forward,” she said. “Those programs that can’t are looking at ways to help students if we are able to come back in the fall. We’re all hopeful we’ll be back in the clinical areas in the fall.”
If any students have to repeat a semester, Mountain said, they would not have to pay again at Sacramento City College, and she doesn’t expect any other schools to do that either. The class won’t even show up as dropped on their record, she said.
Mountain said that she has 30 years of experience working with the BRN and nursing instruction, so she and her team and other educators around the Sacramento region were ready to go with online classes and clinical simulations when the order to shelter in place was issued.
“People have stepped up out of the woodwork and said, ‘I want to share this. I want to share that,’” Mountain said. “The community at large has been pretty amazing, not just the Sacramento community but the greater community of nursing education. We have a lot of partners that we buy products and software from. Many, many, many of them have offered us products at 50 percent off or products for free to beta-test. A lot of schools are doing that. We’re doing the best we can to provide the best education we can.”
This story was originally published April 6, 2020 at 1:00 PM with the headline "California makes concession for nursing students after coronavirus affects training access."
