NEWAC begins study of Senate Bill 1015, assigns subcommittees to examine clinical-placement standards and equity

The Nursing Education Workforce Advisory Committee, the advisory body to the California Board of Registered Nursing, voted to begin the study required by Senate Bill 1015 and assigned existing subcommittees to carry out the first phase of the work.

SB 1015, signed by the governor on Sept. 27, 2024, directs NEWAC to “study and recommend standards regarding how approved schools of nursing or nursing programs manage or coordinate clinical placements,” including whether statewide or regional consortiums should be used, how to detect and report violations of Business and Professions Code section 2786.4, and how to ensure fair and equitable access to clinical placements. Committee Chair Garrett Chan moved the measure of assignment; the motion passed by roll call vote.

Why it matters: Clinical placements and “clinical impaction” — when nursing programs cannot place students in required direct-patient settings — have been linked to limits on program capacity and to workforce projections. Committee members said a measured, evidence-driven study is needed before the board considers regulatory or legislative changes.

Carmen Comstee, speaking as a sponsor representative, described the bill’s intent: “This bill was meant to, as you can see, to have NEWAC look at the issues surrounding clinical identification and particularly looking at what is happening now with how schools are meeting educational, clinical education requirements.” Executive Officer Laurie Melby told members the board needs better, standardized facility-level data to make sustainable decisions, noting the board’s historical effort on this topic. “The Board of Registered Nursing only has authority over the academic institutions. So we get second-hand information,” Melby said, adding that state efforts to centralize consistent data collection have been tried in prior sessions.

Committee members and invited guests emphasized that many regional consortia already operate across California and that any statewide solution would need to respect regional practice patterns and existing partnerships. “A consortium is only good as the healthcare entities that join it,” Melby said. Several members described consortia as scheduling and data platforms that facilitate conflict resolution among academic programs before requests reach hospital or clinic partners.

NEWAC directed the clinical placement impaction subcommittee (co-chaired by Joanne Spetz) to lead work on consortium participation and equitable access and directed the curriculum-standards subcommittee (co-chaired by Janine Graves and Sajid DeGuzman) to study how approved programs maintain clinical education standards. Staff counsel Reza was tasked to support the subcommittee work on identifying and clarifying the board’s enforcement authority related to paying-for-placement complaints under the Business and Professions Code.

The committee emphasized process and scope: members recommended an environmental scan to document what regional consortia already do, which data items are missing, and whether standardized reporting fields could be collected statewide without disrupting local scheduling relationships. Laurie Melby said the board is preparing a clinical-facilities approval data bank to track facility use by school and expects to release it in the coming year.

The subcommittees will report findings back to NEWAC for an eventual report to the Legislature as required by SB 1015. Members discussed dividing the work across existing subcommittees to allow deeper work between public meetings.