In the Year 2000, Give Yourself the Gift of Privacy
Gloria Craven, RN, MS
Director, Department of Legislation and Government Affairs

In the year 2000, all registered nurses will have to renew their license to practice nursing with the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Nursing (BORN). This event coincides with your birthday and you will be notified by the BORN a few weeks before your renewal date. Part of this process will include updating the BORN with your name, address, and other information, some of which is accessible to the general public from the BORN’s web site.

In 1998, the BORN went to a live web site listing of all nurses licensed in the Commonwealth. Since your full name and license number is on the web page and a city is listed where you can be located, YOU must think about the implications of this information for your own safety. Seeing this as a serious and perhaps dangerous problem for some nurses, the MNA secured and negotiated a safe provision for nurses who work with violent or potentially violent populations. Under this provision, nurses may chose to provide the BORN with an alternative address, such as an employer’s address or a post office box.

Please note that the BORN will catalog only one address for all of its communications with you, including the newsletter, your license renewal notice, your new license and any other communications. Therefore, if you chose to provide the BORN with an alternative address it needs to be one where you can continuously and conveniently receive and retrieve this important mail. YOU will be responsible for notifying the BORN of a change in address if you choose to change jobs.

Until the state invests in the computer capacity to list only an employer city/town and not your mailing address, the opportunity to protect yourself is solely your responsibility. If you have any questions about its implications or applications, please do not hesitate to contact Gloria Craven, RN, MS at ext. 716 or Stacy Ober, RN, JD at ext. 787.

Happy Birthday RNs and Be safe!!!