Spring 2021 • Volume 19 Issue 2 Official Publication of the Ohio Board of Nursing Ohio opens new stationary mass vaccination sites and mobile clinics: Nurses are essential in the fight against COVID Momentum is published by the CONTENTS Ohio Board of Nursing 17 South High St., Suite 660 SPRING 2021 I Volume 19 Issue 2 Columbus, Ohio 43215-3466 Phone: 614-466-3947 Fax: 614-466-0388 4 From the President www.nursing.ohio.gov President From the Executive Director Lauralee Krabill, MBA, RN 6 Vice President Administrative Rule Revisions: Joanna Ridgeway, LPN 8 Effective February 1, 2021 Executive Director Reciprocal Disciplinary Actions 8 Betsy J. Houchen, JD, MS, RN 10 — Quick Tips of the Month The mission of the Ohio Board of Nursing is to actively safeguard Submission of Nursing Education the health of the public through the Program Completion Letters effective regulation of nursing care. 12 (PCLs): New Naming Format for PCL Documents and ZipFiles Information published in Momentum is not copyrighted and may be reproduced. Nurse Education Assistance Loan The Board would appreciate credit for 16 Programs (NEALP) the material used. Advertisements contained herein Volunteer Nursing Practice are not necessarily endorsed 17 12 by the Ohio Board of Nursing. The publisher reserves the RNs and APRNs: RENEWAL 2021 right to accept or reject 18 advertisements for Momentum. The Ohio Board of Nursing is an How Do I Change My Name with the equal opportunity employer. 22 Board? How Do I Change My Address? MOMENTUM is produced Advisory Groups and Committees at no cost to Ohio taxpayers. 23 Board Disciplinary Actions 29 Practice Intervention and Improvement Program (PIIP) 27 Momentum is the official journal The Practice of Nursing/License of the Ohio Board of Nursing. pcipublishing.com Requirements for Nursing Students Momentum’s traditional journal 28 & interactive digital companion Created by Publishing Concepts, Inc. Completing Clinical Practice in Ohio David Brown, President • 1-800-561-4686 ext.103 as Part of Their Educational Program serve over 294,000 nurses, [email protected] administrators, faculty and nursing For Advertising info contact students, 4 times a year all across Nancy Montgomery • 1-800-561-4686 ext.106 Vaccine Administration [email protected] 29 Ohio. Momentum is a timely, widely read and respected voice in Ohio ThinkNurse.com nursing regulation. edition 73 Ohio Board of Nursing 3 Lauralee Krabill, MBA, RN FROM President THE PRESIDENT he Board is pleased to welcome Nancymarie Phillips, RN, to the Board! She has an extensive nursing career in Tperi-operative nursing and as a nursing educator. We look • Nursing students may assist in COVID-19 and/or flu forward to working with her on the Board! immunization clinics and may administer vaccines if the nursing student is acting under the auspices of their pre- As 2021 progresses, the state continues to focus on COVID-19 license nursing education program, and supervised by a vaccinations. Please see the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) program faculty member, teaching assistant or preceptor. See Director Journal Entry regarding COVID-19 volunteer vaccine Section 4723.32(A), ORC. The nursing program must have a providers for further information. The Journal Entry and other items contract with the agency/entity where the nursing students of interest to nurses regarding COVID-19 updates may also be found will be participating in the vaccine clinic. on the Board’s website at https://nursing.ohio.gov/covid-19- information/. The Board encourages you to be a provider of • CNPs, CNSs or CNMs may delegate the administration of a vaccinations. The Ohio Responds Volunteer Registry (https://www. vaccine to an unlicensed person, provided they verify that the ohioresponds.odh.ohio.gov) is the State of Ohio’s online system for unlicensed person has the education, training, and competency managing public health and health care professionals who wish to to safely administer the medication; the APRN is on site at the volunteer to provide vaccinations. This site supports a variety of time of the administration; and the APRN assures the delegation personnel who may be called to action during disasters and public is not taking place at a hospital inpatient care unit, as defined health activities. Ohio Responds is the system used to notify in Section 3727.50, ORC, a hospital or a freestanding emergency volunteers of the specific events happening in their community. For department, or an ambulatory surgical facility, as defined in information or questions about volunteering to provide COVID Section 3702.30, ORC. vaccines, please use these links: Ohio Responds Volunteer Registry FAQs; Ohio Responds Registry username or password assistance; The Ohio Department of Health (ODH) has been planning and Contact an Ohio Responds program administrator. coordinating response to the vaccinations in Ohio with the Governor’s Office. They are in the best position to respond to Nurses often ask whether they may provide these vaccines without your questions. Visit coronavirus.ohio.gov(https://coronavirus. a physician or other authorized prescriber onsite, and if it is ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/home) or call 1-833-4-ASK- appropriate for the nurse to administer the vaccine based on a ODH for more information on Ohio’s response to COVID-19. COVID-19 or flu vaccine protocol rather than an order for each The Call Center is staffed from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day, individual receiving the vaccine. including weekends. • Nurses may administer COVID-19 and/or flu vaccine to The Ohio Department of Health has launched a tool on individuals in an immunization clinic based on an authorized vaccine.coronavirus.ohio.gov to assist residents looking for a vaccine protocol. Nurses who administer the vaccine in the provider that has been allocated vaccines (https://vaccine. immunization clinic would implement the protocol for coronavirus.ohio.gov). The tool is searchable by zip code and vaccine administration in the same manner they would county, but it will not be uploaded in real-time. It is critical that implement a patient-specific order. those eligible to receive a vaccine consult local resources to determine up-to-date vaccine availability. • Whether the vaccine is authorized by a protocol or by a patient-specific order, RNs and LPNs have the authority to The Board also helps distribute COVID-19 and nursing practice administer COVID-19 and/or flu vaccine without a physician information through a link on our website at https://nursing.ohio. or other authorized provider onsite. As with any medication, gov/covid-19-information/. a nurse must administer the vaccine consistent with the standards of practice set forth in Chapter 4723-4, OAC. Thank you nurses for your important work to fight the pandemic! 4 MOMENTUM Ohio Board of Nursing 5 Betsy J. Houchen, FROM THE RN, MS, JD EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Executive Director ver one year ago, the declared COVID-19 emergency began, and the Spring issue of Momentum was ready to go to print. We quickly re-wrote many of the articles to Oaddress the pandemic. The Board understood from the beginning that nurses are vital for patient care and safeguarding public health during the pandemic. At that time, we created a webpage to help provide nursing specific information related to licensing, education Although we are programs, and nursing practice, as well as to promote the state’s websites devoted to COVID- 19 related information. You can find that information today at https://nursing.ohio.gov/ issuing more licenses covid-19-information/. than last year, there The Board also recognized the importance of our role in having increased numbers of remains a high licensees to provide care, and prioritized licensing for new graduates or others re-entering the workforce by reinstating/reactivating their license. The Board was pleased that the Nurse workload of Practice Act already addressed nurse mobility -- under Ohio law, out-of-state licensed nurses applications to can work in Ohio during a declared emergency without obtaining a license in Ohio. complete, and the During this time, the Board continues to have an unprecedented number of calls and emails and it has been a continual challenge to timely respond to the calls and emails. We estimate Board continues to 90% of the calls are due to the application being incomplete or fees not paid. identify ways to While we work hard to respond, due to staffing limitations, it is a balance of spending time streamline responding to calls or getting the licenses issued. When we focus on issuing and expediting licensing, there are increased calls and emails from licensees voicing concerns that they cannot processes. reach staff at the Board. We understand and are working to balance the calls with issuing licenses. The Board has a total of seven (7) staff who work full-time on licensure work for over 300,000 licensees. To provide a snapshot of the scope of work from March 1, 2020 to February 26, 2021, we processed/licensed: • 18,081 (96%) RN/LPN applications • 2,387 (95%) APRN applications • 9,845 (92%) reciprocity applications • 1,587 (87%) reinstatement applications Although we are issuing more licenses than last year, there remains a high workload of applications to complete, and the Board continues to identify ways to streamline processes. To streamline the processing of reinstatement/reactivation applications, the Board initiated an administrative rule change, effective February 1, 2021, which eliminates staff review of large numbers of CE documents accompanying the application, a lengthy review process that caused delays. A review process that took hours for each application is now taking 15 minutes. In addition, nurses applying for reinstatement/reactivation no longer need to submit CE documents with the application. Another innovation scheduled for early March is implementation of an enhancement to the Ohio eLicense system so that Program Completion Letters (PCLs) for new graduates can be automatically 6 MOMENTUM uploaded and matched to the application to reduce the manual work to match the documents.