Op-ed: Remove invasive mental health questions from licensure applications

A MedPage Today op-ed calls for state boards of nursing to eliminate invasive mental health questions from nursing licensure applications. The authors include AONL member Bernadette Melnyk, PhD, APRN, Ohio State University’s vice president for health promotion and chief wellness officer, and attorney J. Corey Feist, MBA, president and co-founder of the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation. They recently published a study in Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing using the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes' Foundation toolkit to identify boards of nursing with invasive questioning. They found 37 state boards of nursing did not meet the toolkit guidelines for adherence. “By removing these questions, we can remove a major barrier for nurses to seek help for mental health conditions and, hopefully, prevent more nurses from dying by suicide,” they write. (MedPage Today Op-Ed, 11/15/23)