Nursing Staff Expanded During SARS-Cov-2 Pandemic

Texas Governor Greg Abbott authorized an innovative framework to increase the number of nurses to join the expanding COVID-19 care team.

On March 21, 2020, Governor Abbott waived several regulations that will expand Texas’ active nursing workforce by doing the following:

• Allowing temporary permit extensions to practice for graduate nurses and graduate vocational nurses who have yet to take the licensing exam.
• Allowing students in their final year of nursing school to meet their clinical objectives by exceeding the 50% limit on simulated experiences.
• Allowing nurses with inactive licenses or retired nurses to reactivate their licenses.

Governor Abbott said in a statement, "Nurses are essential to our ability to test for this coronavirus and provide care for COVID-19 patients. Suspending these regulations will allow us to bring additional skilled nurses into the workforce to assist with our efforts and enhance our COVID-19 response."

Serena Bumpus, RN, director of practice for the Texas Nurses Association offered these suggestions, 'I think that if you are over the age of 60, the CDC recommends that you do stockpile a few essentials. If you have the ability to get 90 days’ worth of prescription medications, then you need to obtain your 90 days worth of prescription meds and stock your house with non-perishables and things like that. For those of us who are relatively healthy, we don't need large amounts of toilet paper and hand sanitizer and those sorts of things.' 

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