Evidence-Based Nursing Regulation: A Challenge for Regulators

These are complex times for regulators on nursing boards, particularly in three areas. First, they must stay abreast of emerging practice issues emanating from technological advances, systems thinking, a more diverse patient population living longer with multiple chronic illnesses, and a national focus on patient safety and error prevention. Second, there has been a national call for the transformation of nursing education (Benner, Sutphen, Leonard, & Day, 2009; Greiner & Knebel, 2003), and nursing boards are seeing increasing numbers of substandard or fraudulent nursing education programs. This adds to the boards' workload. Third, disciplinary activity involving nurses has increased during the last 10 years (National Council of State Boards of Nursing, 2009), forcing regulators to stay on their toes regarding disciplinary action and investigation. In this challenging climate, the time is ripe to focus on evidence-based regulation as a strategy for making quality decisions related to regulation.