RNs say S.B. 1015 is a commonsense reform for California nursing students’ clinical education placements

California Nurses Association (CNA), the largest union of registered nurses in the state, applauds the signing of Senate Bill 1015 by Governor Gavin Newsom. Nurses say the new law, which was authored by Senator Dave Cortese and sponsored by CNA, is an essential step towards ensuring clinical placement opportunities for California’s future nurses, particularly for students attending public institutions like community colleges and state universities.

“This commonsense reform will increase transparency around and equitable access to clinical education placements for nursing students across the state,” said CNA President Michelle Gutierrez Vo, RN. “It is critical that all of California’s future nurses have clinical placement opportunities. This law will help ensure that hospitals and other health care facilities can continue to meet our state’s nursing workforce and staffing needs.”

Clinical placements are an essential and necessary part of any nursing education. California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) data shows that, in 2021 and 2022, nursing students at a staggering 92 of California’s 152 nursing programs had been denied access to clinical placements. Nursing schools reported to the BRN that the inability to secure clinical placements was the number two reason for not enrolling more students and that the issue was an acute problem for public nursing education programs.

If those trends continued unchecked, nurses feared the existing dynamic would exacerbate an uneven playing field for students from community colleges and public schools, which are vital for ensuring the state’s nursing workforce reflects the diversity of California and provide an affordable pathway into the nursing profession.

The law will mandate new levels of transparency for clinical placements and begin developing standards for those placements to ensure equitable access. It will empower the BRN to collect and analyze how BRN-approved programs handle these placements, information that will be presented to the state legislature annually. Additionally, it calls on the BRN’s Nursing Education and Workforce Advisory Committee to recommend standards that will ensure fair and equitable access to clinical placements.

California Nurses Association/National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the nation with more than 100,000 members in more than 200 facilities throughout California and nearly 225,000 RNs nationwide.