HJBR Mar/Apr 2022

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I  MAR / APR 2022 45 Karen C. Lyon, PhD, MBA, APRN-CNS, NEA Chief Executive Officer Louisiana State Board of Nursing legislature, the Governor’s Office, and Joseph Kanter, MD, at the Louisiana Department of Health. • Karen Lyon, PhD, elected as Area 3 Board member for NCSBN, which includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mis- sissippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. • Collaboration with Louisiana Depart- ment of Health (LDH) and receipt of grant to develop video and marketing program related to our alternative to discipline Recovering Nurse Pro- gram. • Collaboration with LSNA Foundation to establish the Sister Lucie Leonard recovering nurses fund to assist nurs- es with substance use disorders. STRATEGIC PRIORITY C: Maintain organi- zational effectiveness, efficiency, and ac- countability. • Improved customer service experi- ences with new telephone system and access to all documents electronically through the LSBN Portal and Laser- fiche. • Staff maintained over 95% effective- ness and efficiency in the remote workspace: • Metrics accomplished includ- ed increased case closures and shortened time for processing ap- plications and licensures. • Developed ACH payments, im- proving accounting and financial processing. • Facilitated paper-light accounting processes. • 100% staff participation in re- newal through processing of tele- phone and email queries. • Leveraging ORBS reports to provide data-driven actions for improving practice, regulation, education, and workforce devel- opment. CRITICAL ISSUES FOR 2022 AND 2023 Based on the analysis reviewed above, LSBN’s board of directors has established critical issues requiring our attention over the next two years: 1. What is the long-term impact of COVID-19 on our nursing workforce? Will there be an increase in retire- ments, resignations, enrollments in nursing schools? How do we manage this change in nursing workforce? 2. Will the stress of working during a pandemic now entering its 3rd year result in more complaints against nurses, violations of the Nurse Prac- tice Act and/or LSBN Rules and Reg- ulations? 3. How does LSBN address the rampant disinformation placed on social me- dia platforms by nurses? 4. Should LSBN have a broader social media presence on our Facebook platform? Is this the proper role of a regulatory agency? 5. How will LSBN support our external partners’ efforts to pass legislation for full practice authority for APRNs? 6. Are we fully engaged with employers, educators, and other nursing organi- zations to design the nursing work- force of the future? 7. The board has requested operational- izing formal, ongoing training in reg- ulatory board governance, role clarity and codification, self-evaluation for the board collectively and individu- ally, and succession planning for both the board and executive level staff. LSBN will use the priorities identified above to develop tracks of work to orga- nize our work toward accomplishing our objectives. For the next 12 months, those tracks of work will be related to support- ing full practice authority, collaborating with our stakeholders to develop the fu- ture nursing workforce, and supporting the transition to practice for our new nurs- es, developing a board evaluation process, promoting board professional develop- ment, and responding to the changing practice and learning environments. To accomplish these objectives, we will need the support of our nurses. We look forward to engaging with each of you as we work to keep our profession advancing. In closing, I leave you with these three life rules (author unknown): 1. If you don’t go after what you want, you will never have it. 2. If you don’t ask, the answer will always be no. 3. If you don’t step forward, you will always be in the same place. n