Board of Nursing: There is room for improvement

In response to complaints of overseas nurses who claim they have been waiting for the CNMI Board of Nursing to release documents they’ve been waiting for months, the board acknowledges that there is “room for continuous improvements” within the agency.

According to NMI BON chair Roca Quitugua Sablan, there is room for improvement when it comes to the agency’s processing times for documents that some nurses are asking for.

“The NMI BON does acknowledge that there is always room for continuous improvement with processing time without compromising our value to ensure that applications received are legitimate, which is why we have applied with the National Council State Board of Nursing for their Optimal Regulatory Board System in 2020 and was waitlisted to start this year, 2023. The BON has invested approximately $50,000 to upgrade and expedite the application process. Since this platform is paperless, it would enable all board members to view and review applications even outside the office and may also give room for applicants to submit applications electronically. The system upgrade has been in the works and we are happy that it is finally coming along to bring greater efficiency to our office operations,” she said in an email to Saipan Tribune. See letter to the editor on Page 9

However, Sablan noted that the main purpose of the BON is to protect the CNMI community from fraudulent nurses, and to make sure licensed nurses in the CNMI is abiding by the state’s Nurse Practice Act.

“Processing and reviewing applications to sit for [the National Council Licensure Examination], requests for [Certificate of Good Standing], endorsement, etc., are not the main purpose of why the BON exist. We also look after the validity of nursing education and training within the NMI. More importantly, the NMI Board of Nursing has other significant fiduciary duties, such as ensuring that [nurses] and techs who are licensed by the NMI are abiding by our state NPA or Nurse Practice Act. The board has the power to terminate, suspend, or sanction licensees who are non-compliant with our NPA. We ensure our nurses have no past or present disciplinary actions before issuing them a license to care for our CNMI community. The community is more than welcomed to submit complaints to the BON in regards to nursing issues and those complaints are investigated if a licensee is found to be in violation of the NPA,” she said.

Sablan also noted that the CNMI BON consists of a small group of members who are tasked to review thousands of different applications and requests and, even if they go beyond what they are required to do, it is still difficult to go through all these documents expeditiously.

“The NMI Board…is a small autonomous board with five office staff and seven board members. Board members are not required by law to have a meeting every week or every month but are required to meet quarterly. In the past, the board members review applications that have completed the requirements quarterly, which took longer for any applicant to get an approval. This took about three to nine months. Since then, as the chairperson of the Board, I encouraged all board members to review applications weekly or when time permits. All six board members have full time nursing jobs and one community member,” she said.

“Our office personnel have worked diligently to filter through thousands of documents received by our office on top of responding to queries from applicants not only in the CNMI and the U.S., but internationally. So yes, our phone lines will always be busy,” Sablan added.