Jennifer Pherson, a licensed practical nurse (LPN), struggled in vain for the past three months to get a form filled out by a Connecticut state agency so she can work as a nurse in Massachusetts, only to have that form rejected by the the Massachusetts Board of Nursing.
The problem causing the long delay, it turns out, is that no one was really sure which Connecticut state agency held onto the information.
A traveling nurse who has a home in Georgia but spends weeks or even months working on a contractual basis in other states, Pherson graduated from Norwich Technical High School’s LPN program, which was part of Connecticut’s adult education program, in 2010. That adult LPN education program at Norwich was shut down by the state, and she was told the technical schools only retain the information for six years.
Pherson needs to get a reciprocal nursing license for Massachusetts so she can do an extended visiting nurse job in that state and Massachusetts requires a three-page form to be filled out by an administrator that includes information like where she did her clinical rotations and the number of hours – information that does not appear on a normal school transcript.
Norwich has already provided the basic transcript and Pherson paid the $275 fee for the Massachusetts license, but the process was held up because she couldn’t get the three-page document filled out by the appropriate agency.
“Next week will be three months I’ve tried to get this,” Pherson said in an interview.
She contacted not only Norwich Technical High School, but also the Connecticut Board of Nursing. The Board of Nursing directed her to the Office of Higher Education (OHE). From there she was sent from email to email, person to person within OHE trying to get anyone who could fill out this document and mail it to the licensing contractor for Massachusetts.
“I have a record of leaving 19 voicemails on nine different numbers I have been given over this time and 14 emails, six of which went to the actual director, Tim Larson,” Pherson said. She even drove up to Connecticut from Georgia to go in person to get someone to pay attention, but she was told by a security guard that she could not go upstairs to OHE and was directed back to the office’s website.
“I’m running out of time,” Pherson said at the time of the interview and noted that she will have to pay another $275 fee if her application window runs out.
She finally heard back from Noelle Kidney at OHE, who then directed her to another source – the Connecticut Technical Education and Career System (CTECS).
Reached for information, Kidney says their office doesn’t have oversight over state technical schools, but rather private occupational schools, like Stone Academy, a private academy that abruptly closed leaving 900 students studying to be LPN’s and Certified Nursing Assistants without a school.
Kidney, who says their voicemail has been fairly inundated with Stone Academy inquiries, directed CII to reach out to the State Department of Education and says she reached out to CTECS on behalf of Pherson.
CTECS indicated that they do have the records and information “which is needed to meet the specific licensing requirements of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Nursing,” according to an email from Career Center and Communications Director Kerry Markey.
However, Jennifer says she was told to fill in the form herself. Ellen Solek, executive director of CTECS, said she would sign the form and mail it to the appropriate address after Pherson filled it out, according to emails between Pherson and Solek. Pherson, however, refused to fill out the paperwork herself because, “this would be illegal and I didn’t want to risk losing my license or permission to work in MA,” she wrote in an email to CII.
Ultimately, the form was mailed in by Norwich Technical School – bringing the matter full circle to Pherson’s original starting point — but was rejected because it was missing the required information held by CTECS.
According to the rejection sent by Professional Credential Service, Inc., “the [Certificate of Graduation] cannot be accepted as a few sections are left unanswered (Program Approval Status, Parent Institution Accreditation Status, Program [Accreditation] Approval Status, and the percentage of the total time for the clinical hours spent in the clinical courses listed on the form).”
Pherson says the paperwork has since been updated to include the missing information and she is awaiting a response, but has to pay the $275 fee again, and worries these issues may affect other nurses in the field.
“This needs to be remedied by the state, not me,” Pherson wrote in an email to Solek, informing her that her application was denied. “If this cannot be completed by your office, please let me know and I will have to seek legal action to get it done. This really is ridiculous and a major fail on the state of Connecticut’s part.”
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