By Ingela Dahlgren, RN, SEIU Nurse Alliance of California Executive Director
At the Board of Registered Nursing meeting on February 6, we found out that there have been extensive problems with the new electronic processing system for licensing that was installed in the fall of 2013. The new system – BreEZe – should have been more efficient and reliable than the old system.
Kathy Hughes, Jeannie King, Grace Corse, and I attended the meeting and listened to a nursing student pleading to know when he was going to be allowed to take the NCLEX exam. He said that he had been waiting for months and had two job offers that would start in March. The Board said it could not fast track anybody as that would put everybody else further behind, estimating that there are about 1000 licensing/renewal cases on the backlog. This is not acceptable.
The Board states that their mission is to protect the public, but how can it do that if experienced nurses cannot practice without being able to renew their licenses? What kind of impression does the Board give our new nursing students when they cannot even process their requests to sit for exams?
Twelfth District Assemblymember Kristin Olsen wrote a letter to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee requesting an audit of policies and procedures on the planning, development, and implementation of BreEZe. You can read her letter here.
Our hope is that the Board will hire some extra staff to get through the backlog and have the vendor of the BreEZe fix the system ASAP. Please let me know what kind of problems you and your coworkers have experienced.
