The cooperative effort will focus on information-sharing between the two organizations and technology improvements aimed at creating efficiencies that will streamline credentials verification for nurses applying to work in a new jurisdiction. This comes as state nursing boards across the U.S. face growing pressure to accelerate verification processes and enable nursing staff vacancies to be filled more quickly.

Meanwhile, with growing numbers of foreign-trained nurses applying to work in the United States, the collaboration will also aim to improve efficiencies in verifying their qualifications and shorten approval times, while also improving the capabilities of verification systems to detect fraudulent activities. To further strengthen fraud protection and ensure patient safety, the two organizations will work to facilitate data-sharing between CGFNS' worldwide credentials verification systems and NCSBN's online tools that member boards use to share information about imposter and/or fraudulent nurses.

"Together, we want to vastly reduce the time-consuming manual processes that nursing schools, licensing authorities and nurses themselves must go through to gather and verify transcripts, examination scores, licenses and other information that is essential to ensuring that nurses are qualified to practice," said Peter Preziosi, President and CEO of CGFNS International.

"At a time when health systems are struggling to fill nursing staff vacancies, this collaboration will help expand the flow of qualified nurses to where they are needed by making verification systems more efficient, while hardening them against fraud," he added.

"Our members, the state nursing boards, face the enormous challenge of shortening the time it takes to access the necessary information needed to gain licensure, while also ensuring the integrity of the health workforce and patient safety. The steps we are taking to interface our systems with CGFNS will help us achieve both of those goals," said David Benton, Chief Executive Officer of the NCBSN.