House Bill 2528 requires a restructuring of the board, with all new members who must be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state senate. An interim board is to be appointed and confirmed starting July 1, 2026; they will be in place until the first day of the 2027 legislative session. At that point, the governor will appoint a new board for the legislature to confirm. The bill also voids past non-practice violations, such as clerical errors, going back to January 1, 2005, and narrowed the definition of “unprofessional conduct” to only include actions directly related to clinical practice. To cover the claims of nurses who allege financial harm from the actions of the board in the past, the legislature created a Nurse Fair Treatment and Recovery Fund.

The Kansas Legislature also passed Senate Bill 334, which requires that faculty at any school seeking accreditation from the KSBN as a school for professional or practical nurses have a degree that is at least one level higher than the one the students are pursuing. The bill prevents schools from requiring additional or more advanced credentials than that one level for faculty. This bill does allow for schools facing hardships in hiring to be granted an exception to this requirement.

The KSNA Legislative Committee was very involved this session, with many discussions about these bills and others that involved, directly or indirectly, Kansas nurses. We continue to monitor legislative work in the legislature during this interim period where there are some committees meeting, but full legislature is not in session. We have also started work on next year’s legislative hill day event, which should be even better than this year’s!