Mr Douglas and memebers of the Virginia Board of Nursing,

   I have been a nurse for almost 10 years and 5 of those years have been in assisted living as an Assistant Administrator, Director of Nursing and Staff Educator. I applaud the new regulations in consideration to register our med aides. They need to understand the seriousness of thier role and there has to be some accountability for negative actions. I have had the responsibility of teaching medication aide classes for many years to my employees. I enjoy this and feel that I have done an excellent job of producing med aides who are capable and confident. I am deeply disturbed that this may no longer be something that I am able to do. While I agree with the proposed legislation, I do not agree that an LPN who has been more than capable of teaching this course and has done so for years, will now only be allowed to be a secondary instructor dealing with the skills portion of the class. I feel that there should be some way of "Grandfathering" current LPNs who are instructors. I take pride in how I conduct my classes and encourage students to continue their learning after leaving my class. The current curriculum has no Pharmacology, but I ask my students to start learning about the medicines that they administer on a daily basis, and even have inservices about medications they should be aware of.

Since Medication Aides are limited in what medications they administer, I feel curent LPNs who have been trained, should be allowed to continue training as primary instructors. I would be more than happy to take some type of advanced teaching class that will focus on the new curriculum. Please don't take good teachers who can and know how to relate to their students away from this class simply because they don't have an RN after their name. Let's work together and continue putting knowledgeable Medication Aides into the system.

                                                                   Thank You,

                                                           Rebecca S. Mils, LPN