HJNO Jul/Aug 2025

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  JUL / AUG 2025 63 Karen C. Lyon, PhD, MBA, APRN-CNS, NEA Chief Executive Officer Louisiana State Board of Nursing she said that it helps to absorb the juices, and she had learned it from her mom. The story went through several iterations by the child’s grandmother and great-grand- mother. At this point, the great-grand- mother revealed that she did it because she never had a pan big enough for the whole ham. Cleghorn then reminded us that we do lots of things repetitively without ever questioning why. NCSBN is asking us to challenge the current state of things, hop- ing that the self-reflection will give us the chance to explore new possibilities, to be more innovative and effective. We have many sacred cows within our nursing pro- fession. Jimasked us to explore the regula- tory processes we perform that contribute to this “status quo”mindset. He used two quotes to challenge us: “Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its sta- tus” (Laurence Peter, Canadian educator) and “The riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo” (Bob Iger, former Disney CEO). We then spent individual time writing down the things that challenge us about the regulation of nursing education, crim- inal history, felony bars to licensure, and LPN/LVN scope of practice. Those were difficult tabletop conversations, but ones that provided the NCSBN leadership with challenging topics to question about nurs- ing regulation. n genetics and environment, initial exposure to the substance, critical periods of devel- opment for substance use disorders, and the psychological and biological effects of the substances. He also reminded the audience that there is no other substance that has the immediate potent effect like a psychoactive drug to give us experiences of pleasure. In terms of other epidemiolog- ic factors, we know that if we can prevent early exposure, we can have a major im- pact on preventing the epigenetic effects of these disorders. Kelly’s second presentation focused on treatment. He reminded us that we have started to move away from a harsh, puni- tive approach of incarceration to a broad- er public health approach with legislation designed to create access to mental health and addiction services with other kinds of physical illnesses. In the last 30 years, we’ve learned much about neuroplasticity and how the brain recovers when you remove the poison out of the brain and eliminate exposure. One month of abstinence can produce quite dramatic improvements in brain function. And we can help Mother Nature by cre- ating the right environments for healing, including public health messaging. Kelly introduced us to catchy phrasing like “I can, we can, Narcan.”Narcan has been rev- olutionary in preventing overdose deaths if we can get to victims soon enough. Other programs such as sterile needle exchanges and preventing infectious disease trans- mission through harmreduction programs and psychotherapies like acceptance and mindfulness have had a powerful effect on producing stability in addicts. Kelly completed his presentations by re- minding us that belonging and becoming are two major factors in the recovery pro- cess for people who have been discrim- inated against or stigmatized. If we can create the right conditions to help them feel like they belong somewhere, that they have a place in this world, it will help build the optimism toward recovery. There were many other updates at the midyear meeting, including a panel on “Innovative Approaches to Education and Practice Partnerships,” on which Teresita McNabb participated. The slide decks and transcripts for educational sessions are available at https://www.ncsbn.org/past- event/2025-ncsbn-midyear-meeting. The last presentation I’m going to sum- marize was presented by Jim Cleghorn, deputy chief officer for policy, research, and education at NCSBN. Titled “Exploring Regulation: Challenging the Status Quo,” Cleghorn’s presentation started out with a question: “What is status quo?” The first answer from the audience was, “It’s the thing that [NCSBN] CEO Dr. Phil Dickison hates.” Phil has a strong dislike for prece- dent and “the way we’ve always done it.” Cleghorn told a cute story about a little girl who was helping her mom cook, and she noticed that the mom cut the ends off the ham. When she asked her mother why,