At November's meeting in Reno, the board decided to allow teacher waivers for bachelor's degree nursing programs. The waiver — which has been in place for two years for associate's programs — lets nurses with just bachelor's degrees and experience to teach the hands-on or "clinical" lessons in venues like hospitals and nursing homes.

The compromise policy also takes away a requirement that waiver-seeking nurses have five years of hands-on experience in the past seven years. Now, they just need five years of experience total.

"It'll make more people eligible to be faculty," said Debra Scott, executive director of the nursing board.

But this is not the last of the efforts to change current nursing school practices — one of the hottest medical controversies this year.

The supporters of that first proposal, the one rejected on Sept. 20, still plan to go to the Legislature with a bill that will loosen teacher requirements even more.

"I think (the board's recent policy change) is a step in the right direction, but I don't necessarily think it goes far enough," said state Sen. Joe Heck, R-Henderson, a medical doctor who will sponsor the bill.

Most leaders in the medical industry agree that something should be done to increase the number of nursing instructors in Nevada. This could help pull Nevada out of its status as second-to-worst state for nurses per capita, according to the 2004 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses.

Nurse instructor jobs are usually a hard sell, though — nurses with master's degrees make much more money in the field.

Among many ideas — including paying teachers more, as UNLV does — is the concept of letting in some teachers who do not have a master's degree in nursing.

Nursing purists oppose the concept on all levels, maintaining that it would cheapen the profession because students would not learn nursing theory as well.

As in most higher-education programs, "educators really don't want bachelor's level people doing any teaching," Scott said.

Next year, that will be up to the state Senate, Assembly and governor to decide.

Heck's bill is expected to require a bachelor's degree and two years of experience to be clinical teachers. It also would let lawyers teach nursing law classes and pharmacists teach pharmacy classes.

"The state is still so significantly short of master's-prepared instructors," Heck said.

The bill will also be backed by at least two health care industry groups: the Clark County Medical Society and the Southern Nevada Medical Industry Coalition.

Scott said the nursing board had voted down the proposal on Sept. 20 mostly because of the way that these groups wanted it instituted.

They had insisted on making the changes a regulation, which would have been hard to change. The board wanted a policy, which can be changed easily, Scott said.

Approval through the Legislature would be even more rigid, a statute, which could only be changed by the Legislature.

That proposal had been recommended by the board's education committee. It would have allowed a nurse with a bachelor's degree plus three years of nursing experience to teach clinicals, as long as she reported to an instructor with a master's degree.

"People in the industry are in favor of it — they are in favor of something — but I don't hear that nurses in the position to do more about the shortage are sold on having the statute or the regulation," Scott said.

Heck said he feels strongly against the policy that allows waivers to be given at the executive director's discretion.

"There's no guarantee that they're going to get the waiver," he said.

Scott acknowledges that others are wary about the setup.

"They said, 'What if Debra Scott isn't there anymore, and the new executive director turns out to be very inflexible,'" she said. "But I'm going to be here for a while, so it's going to be OK."

Scott does not expect the new policy changes will trigger a major revolution in nursing schools. The waivers only apply to clinical teachers, and 75 percent of a school's nursing faculty still has to have a master's degree.

Also, waivers only go to teachers who are working toward a master's degree.

"Most of the waivers were on an emergency basis," Scott said. "Somebody had gotten pregnant and was on bedrest, or there was a death in the family and they couldn't teach that semester. I really believe educators are still trying to get a master's in nursing. This is a way to support them if they can't find someone."

In other nursing news, the board has given provisional approval to a nursing program at Apollo College, a multistate chain that is opening a Henderson campus.