When a licensed nurse moves their domicile, they risk the possibility that the Board of Nursing will lose track of their address of record. This would be problematic for several reasons.
For one thing, the Board of Nursing requires that all nurses—and those in the process of applying to become nurses—give the Board notice in writing of their change of address within ten days of the change, along with the details of their new address and the nurse’s assigned license number for verification. (And, to cover all the bases, the same rule applies to any changes in a personal name, for proof of which a legal document detailing the alteration must be submitted.) This notification of address change can be submitted in a number of ways: hard (“snail”) mail, email, or fax.
Sometimes nurses fail to follow this rule and manage to forget about it. This forgetfulness finds an unfortunate aid because soon after moving, they nevertheless begin to receive mass mail from the Board of Nursing. This occurs because the Board sends out monthly mailings, in which all the nurses’ addresses are processed through the National Change of Address database. This database tracks all of the available change-of-address information over a rolling period of the previous four years, providing the service to those who make mass mailings of updating mailing lists for businesses, families, and, importantly, individuals who have changed their primary address.
But this procedure is not applied to personal mail sent out by the Board of Nursing. Personal mailings are often of a quality that cannot be left to third-party notifications and services. The Board holds nurses to a high level of personal responsibility, both within the practices of their profession and in other areas of life pertaining to their licensure. This is why, if a nurse fails to inform the Board of their move within the dictated ten days, they may become subject to disciplinary action (particularly if this has caused the nurse to miss some deadline conveyed via personal mail).
It is, therefore, imperative that a nurse who moves or changes their name contact the Board within the allotted time frame.
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