After contacting Delegates Donald W Merricks and Daniel W Marshall we received a response from Delegate Merricks. He responded by email explaining his personal involvement in the development of the bill.
"Thank you for your email and your interest in HB253. For your information, this bill was carried over to the next session in order for me to meet with the nursing professionals and come up with a plan to incorporate the corpsman program into our nursing licensure program. The bill incorrectly stated that a corpsman could achieve RN status by completing the exam. The intent of the bill was only for licensed practical nursing. The reason behind the bill came from my legislative assistant whose sister passed away last year having fought a brave battle with breast cancer. The hospital where she was admitted had numerous "foreign" nurses assisting her and one individual who was most helpful was a corpsman but could only change her bed pan and change the sheets on her bed. Corpsman go through extensive training and work in field hospitals handling nursing duties and more. With a shortage of nurses and the future looking like a shortage will continue, it seemed reasonable to develop a program that would give credit for the corpsman training. In addition, we have several military bases in Virginia and this type program would hopefully keep good people here in Virginia. West Virginia and California have programs such as this now. While I do not wish to take away from the education portion of nursing, I do want to somehow give credit for the training a corpsman receives.
Thanks again for your interest and I hope this clears up any issues you may have."
Merrick identified a mistake in the bill that was brought to our attention involving the licensure of medical corpsmen to RN. This should be corrected to state that medical corpsmen will only be able to obtain LPN licensure. If these amendments are made to House Bill 253, we will then be in support of it.
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