Lessons Learned and Insights Gained: A Regulatory Analysis of the Impacts, Challenges, and Responses to COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call for many aspects of our daily lives. Nurse regulators have had to respond quickly to many of the challenges that the profession has faced. Some solutions have been formulated on sound evidence and represent an appropriate and rational response to what could be described as long-overdue change. Other solutions have been less than ideal and have functioned as a stopgap or trade-off between two or more less than ideal scenarios. In this article we begin with a brief synopsis of pandemics. We then describe the method, results and discussion, and limitations of our analysis of legislative changes pertinent to professional regulation. Our analysis and conclusions reflect on lessons learned, identify opportunities that should be consolidated into permanent change, and discuss issues that need to be addressed if we are to be better prepared for the next pandemic.