In an effort to address a statewide shortage of licensed nursing assistants, New Hampshire is changing state law to allow individuals with limited English proficiency to become LNAs.
The new legislation, which was signed into law on July 3 and takes effect September 1, will still require LNAs to have adequate English proficiency to perform their jobs but will no longer require them to take a written test to demonstrate their writing and reading proficiency. The new law would allow workers who speak languages other than English, including Spanish, French and Swahili, to become LNAs, as noted in a New Hampshire Public Radio report.
Long-term care organizations in the state praised the new law as an important step to helping to reduce the state’s nursing shortage.
“The existing English proficiency standard was an ambiguous barrier to entry to practice as a licensed nursing assistant,” Brendan Williams, president and CEO of the New Hampshire Health Care Association, said in an email statement to McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. “Certainly, nursing assistants must be able to communicate with residents and their supervisors, but expecting them to read Chaucer would be a bit much.”
Williams said that he hopes the new law will help ease the shortage of LNAs in the state but added that much more needs to be done. He said regrettably the state Legislature recently allowed funding to lapse for a promising LNA training initiative.
“I think it helps at the margins,” he said about the new law. “We really need a state investment in training and retention strategies.”
Kerri Dutton, president and owner of LNA Health Careers, a private nursing school in Manchester, NH, pushed for the passage of the new state law, with the help of the bill’s lead sponsor, State Rep. Jaci Grote (D-Rockingham 24) to help address the LNA shortage in the state.
“We’re in severe need of LNAs in all healthcare industries: long-term care, acute health and home health care,” Dutton told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. “This is really going to open up doors for people that were nervous about entering the profession because of the testing requirements.”
Dutton said over the last four years, she knows of about 200 potential LNA applicants that either dropped out or were turned away because they were unable to meet the state’s English testing requirements.
“I think we’ll be viewed as more welcoming and more diverse,” she said. “We had a lot of people who just didn’t feel comfortable about that process or were nervous about the outcome, so they didn’t partake in that process. I can’t wait to see the benefits of this and more and more people entering the nursing workforce.”
Dutton said other states have done even more than New Hampshire in relaxing the language requirements for new nursing assistant applicants. She said New Hampshire still requires LNAs to pass a competency exam, which is written in English, while other states allow potential nursing assistant applicants to take that exam in other languages.
Massachusetts, for example, passed a law last year which allows certified nursing assistants to take their written tests in Spanish or Chinese. Nursing home executives and industry advocates at the time called the change a win for immigrant CNAs and residents who speak other languages.
