Nursing Regulations: APRN Practice and Mental Health Across States

This discussion post examines the regulations set forth by various state Boards of Nursing, focusing on their impact on mental health nursing and Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs). It begins by outlining the role of Boards of Nursing in protecting public health and ensuring safe nursing practice, using the Georgia Board of Nursing as an example, highlighting its regulations for licensure, standards of practice, and unprofessional conduct. The discussion extends to APRN regulations in Georgia and Florida, noting the scope of practice for certified Nurse-Midwives and the ability of APRNs to perform nursing diagnoses and treatments. Replies to peers compare these regulations to those in California and Virginia, noting differences in independence, telehealth services, and scope of practice, revealing the varying levels of autonomy and flexibility afforded to APRNs across different states. The post concludes by referencing relevant state regulations and resources.

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH
Mental health
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1MENTAL HEALTH
Initial post:
The Board of Nursing regulation is USA are jurisdictional government agencies in more
than 50 states which aims to protect public health and ensure safe nursing practice. The main role
of these bodies is to outline standard of practice and monitor compliance to jurisdictional laws
among nurses. This group of agencies take action against nurses when they are found to exhibit
poor quality of nursing practice and their license is cancelled too. Each jurisdiction also has
Nurse Practice Law to maintain licence of nurses. In case of the state of Georgia, the mission of
the Georgia Board of Nursing is to protect and preserve public health through legislative
regulation and control of nursing practice. This Board not only lays down rules for nursing
practice, but also gives detail about minimum qualifications required for licensure. It has strict
process to ensure that all staffs adhere to regulations and public protection system (Georgia
Board of Nursing, 2020).
Some regulation of Georgian Board that are crucial in influencing nursing practice
includes the regulations for licensure by examination, licensure renewal, registered nursing
education programs, mandatory reporting, procedural rules and continuing competency. The
regulation related to standards of practice and unprofessional conduct mentions the need for
nurse to apply the nursing process of assessing patient in a systematized manner and formulating
diagnosis based on accessible data. This regulation also mandates that all nurses must assign care
and activities to unlicensed personnel that do not required such skills. In the context of
unprofessional conduct, the regulation clarifies regarding areas that would be called professional
misconduct. The Georgia Board of Nursing also has separate regulations for Advance Practice
Nurse (APN) and a separate APRN Committed has been developed for this purpose. Two
important APN regulations include regulation on standards of practice and the requirement to

2MENTAL HEALTH
practice as a certified Nurse-Midwife. For example, standard of practice included providing
independent manage of women’s health, care of new born, pregnancy and family planning (State
of Georgia, 2020). The state of Florida also has Board of Nursing regulations for APRNs and it
mainly states they can perform acts of nursing diagnosis and treatment too. These responsibilities
are similar to those described for the State of Georgia (Toney-Butler & Martin, 2019). The
APRNs can follow the guidelines to adhere to the regulations.
Reply to student 1:
The post by Sona Voskerchyan described about the regulations developed by the Board
of California. The key feature of the regulation in this state is that it had greater independence in
terms of state permits compared to Georgia. The state of Columbia gives full practice authority
such as they can evaluate patients, prescribe medications and order diagnostic test (California
Board of Registered Nursing, n.d.). In case of Georgia, APRN has similar authority, but they
need to submit many documents to practice as Clinical Nurse Specialist (Scope of Practice
Policy, n.d.).
Reply to student 2:
The post by Carolyn Cheatham discussed about the Board of Nursing in Virginia. From
the review of regulations in this state, it was found that all NP are permitted to provide telehealth
services. This reflected better flexibility in terms of nursing practice (Brown, 2020). However,
same type of independence was not found in Georgia. The regulation did not mention about their
scope to engage in telehealth services (State of Georgia, 2020).

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References:
Brown, D. (2020). Nurse practitioner waiver [PDF]. Retrieved on March 24, 2020,
from http://www.dhp.virginia.gov/media/dhpweb/docs/nursing/leg/RegulationsWaiverNu
rsePractitioner03192020.pdf
California Board of Registered Nursing. (n.d.). What is the board of registered nursing?
Retrieved from: https://www.rn.ca.gov/consumers/whatisbrn.shtml
Georgia Board of Nursing (2020). Fiscal Year 2016 Annual Report. Retrieved from:
https://sos.ga.gov/PLB/acrobat/Forms/38%20Reference%20-%20Fiscal%20Year
%202016%20Annual%20Report.pdf
Scope of Practice Policy. (n.d.). Georgia Scope of Practice Policy: State Profile. Retrieved from:
http://scopeofpracticepolicy.org/states/ga/
State of Georgia (2020). Chapter 410-11 REGULATION OF ADVANCED PRACTICE
REGISTERED NURSES. Retrieved from: https://rules.sos.ga.gov/gac/410-11
Toney-Butler, T. J., & Martin, R. L. (2019). Florida Nursing Laws and Rules. In StatPearls
[Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.

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