Ga. nursing leaders take state official’s actions personally

The Georgia Board of Nursing wants a divorce.

After years of poor communication, lingering resentments and suspicious maneuvering, the nurses want out of their long-term relationship with Secretary of State Brian Kemp. It’s been coming for a while, but Kemp’s sudden decision to remove the board’s executive director was the final straw.

When the board met last week in Macon, the room was filled with nurses and nursing students from around the state. They were concerned about plans, revealed last month, to remove Executive Director Jim Cleghorn and replace him with the executive director of the board of cosmetology, which regulates nail salons among other things.

Kemp’s decision galvanized state nursing leaders, who spread the word among Georgia’s 158,000 registered nurses.

“I have to ask myself: Is this personal?” Linda Streit, dean of the Georgia Baptist College of Nursing at Mercer University, said at the meeting. “I think it’s personal for a lot people in this room.”

After meeting with the heads of several nursing programs and representatives of the nursing lobby, Kemp backtracked and suggested the personnel swap could be delayed six months. But he stood by his decision in the name of “cross-training” his staff.

Kemp sent his legislative director, Chuck Harper, to the meeting to offer that Cleghorn’s replacement not be made for another year, six months longer than he first proposed. It was the wrong move, both in tone and substance, and the board rejected it out of hand.

Like an inattentive spouse, Harper seemed to lack a basic understanding of the board’s complaints.

Referring to Kemp’s latest timetable for replacing Cleghorn, Harper said, “I thought that is what you wanted.” Nurses in the audience laughed out loud at that.

“We want to keep our executive director,” Brenda Rowe, the outgoing president of the nursing board, replied.

It didn’t help that Kemp’s latest olive branch came as a total surprise to the board. This just emphasizes the lack of communication between Kemp and the nurses, board member Nancy Barton said.

“We have outgrown the current organizational structure,” Barton, an administrator at Northeast Georgia Medical Center in