Pandemic suggests need to reform nursing registration

The COVID-19 pandemic left many hospital systems struggling to overcome imbalances in the national supply of nurses. Authors of a recent article in Nursing Outlook looked to the past to understand how the legacy of state-based nurse registration left some communities at a loss during the current crisis. The researchers focused on Pennsylvania, which is not a member of the Nurse Licensure Compact, a voluntary national registration system, which has been growing slowly since 2000. “The current state-based system in nurse registration is anachronistic, and all efforts should be made to move immediately toward a national system that is already emerging,” the authors concluded. (Nursing Outlook article, 1/13/21)