Unsafe building, lack of staff force nursing board to relocate its office

Due to a very old building that now poses health and safety threats and lack of staffing to assist nurses, the Commonwealth Board of Nurse Examiners will move out of its current office on Capital Hill and relocate to the new Department of Public Health facility in Garapan.

“Our office on Capital Hill is not a safe place anymore,” Roca Q. Sablan, vice chair of the seven-member nursing board, told Saipan Tribune.

By moving to the new DPH building in Garapan, she said the board will not only have a safer office but will also receive help from other DPH staff in answering the phone when nurses call for information and for filing documents.

“The secretary of Health knows that we need help at the office. So the solution is for us to move down to DPH so that someone there can help us with answering the phone and filing. The office we are supposed to move in now is where the human resource office is, at the new [DPH] building,” said Sablan.

For many years, the nursing board had only one full-time employee, while the volunteer board members have full-time jobs.

Sablan said the board members have been trying their best to be at the board office to evaluate, sign applications and/or verify documents submitted by nurses.

“We have been having a problem with getting a clerk for our office,” said Sablan, adding that the board has tried numerous times to ask for another full-time clerk to help answer the phones, reply to e-mails and attend to nurse applicants.

She said the only full-time employee is swamped with work related to renewals of nurse applications and filing, and has no time answering phone calls or responding to e-mails.

“For now it is not a good idea to get in touch with us by phone or e-mail since we are in the process of moving our office down to DPH,” said Sablan, adding that it’s best for the public to send the board an air mail for inquiries and applications.

Nurses on Saipan and abroad have been complaining about not getting hold of any nursing board staff for inquiries and follow-ups regarding their professional certification and other inquiries.

Many of them said no one answers the nursing board’s listed phone number nor responds to e-mails.

The nursing board is tasked with regulating nurses’ professional accreditation and with giving them the approvals they need to work in hospitals elsewhere in the United States.