Hawaii is, of course, a spectacular place to live and work. As an agency nurse licensed to practice in Hawaii, you have the opportunity to combine a special lifestyle with a rewarding professional practice that provides endless employment opportunities. You know the national, regional, and local need for nursing care. Hawaii, with its sizable population centers in Urban Honolulu, East Honolulu, Hilo, Pearl City, Kailua CDP, Waipahu, and other locations, just happens to be one of the world's most special places in which to practice agency nursing. Hawaii also offers large and well-networked staffing agencies for your ready employment, including Medical Staffing Network, AMN Healthcare, Always Best Care, Travel Care Hawaii, CompHealth, Altres Staffing, BrightStar Care, Kahu Malama Nurses, BAYADA Home Health, and Wilson Care Group. Don't let disciplinary charges ruin everything you have available to you in Hawaii agency nursing. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for the skills and experience you need to protect your Hawaii agency nursing.
Hawaii Staffing Agency Nurse Investment
Truly, to treat Hawaii Board of Nursing disciplinary charges with the seriousness that they deserve, you need to remember and take account of the enormous investment you have in your Hawaii agency nursing. You know the years of nursing education for which you paid and studied diligently. You also know the effort you took to prepare for and pass the NCLEX. You also know the clinical experience you had to gain and prove for licensure, and then all the work you have put in since licensure to build your reputation and network, to secure your staffing agency employment. Misconduct allegations and Hawaii Board of Nursing disciplinary charges put all of that investment at risk. Let us help you guard your investment with our skilled and strategic defense services.
Hawaii Staffing Agency Nurse Employment Benefits
You should also be thinking of the great benefits of your Hawaii staffing agency employment, when determining the time, effort, and resources to devote to contesting Hawaii Board of Nursing disciplinary charges. You may have developed a strong and secure employment relationship with your Hawaii nurse staffing agency. You may be benefiting from your choice of locations in which to work, facilities in which to work, or residences to visit and patients to serve. You may also have the flexibility to try different assignments in different Hawaii locations, and different types of nursing care facilities, under different nurse supervisors while working with different colleagues. That flexibility as a staffing agency nurse can expand your education and skill, keep you fresh, and ensure that you work in your best possible situation. You may also have secure and rewarding income, valuable health insurance, and other employment benefits. Hawaii Board of Nursing discipline places all those staffing agency benefits at risk. Get our help with defense.
Hawaii Staffing Agency Facility Challenges
Unfortunately, your status as a Hawaii staffing agency nurse or “temp,” rather than a direct employee of the facility in which you practice nursing, can place you at extra risk of Hawaii Board of Nursing disciplinary charges. Healthcare facilities can invest substantial resources in recruiting, orienting, training, and retaining employee nurses. The facility in which you work, if it has employee nurses, may favor those nurses over you, assuming that as a temp nurse, you are expendable and that it can always get another temp nurse. That attitude may cause facility personnel to blame you for nursing misconduct committed by others or fail to protect you from false charges of nursing misconduct that a patient, patient's family members, or others make. The facility to which your agency assigned you may also deprive you of access to grievance procedures or other procedural safeguards that it offers to its own permanent employees, once again leaving you at risk of misconduct charges. Get our help invoking and navigating your facility's procedures to help forestall and avoid damaging Board of Nursing disciplinary charges.
Hawaii Nurse Staffing Agency Challenges
As a Hawaii staffing agency nurse, you may also face greater misconduct risks than a facility employee nurse because of your staffing agency employer's reluctance to afford you secure employment safeguards and protections. Your staffing agency may have grievance and dispute-resolution procedures that you should be able to invoke to contest, defend, and defeat misconduct allegations arising out of your facility assignment. However, your agency employer may decide to deny you those safeguards, believing that you are more expendable than the staffing agency's facility client. Your agency might, in effect, sell you out in order to preserve its facility client relationship and income. Beware of these conflicts of interest and their potential adverse effect on your staffing agency employment. Know where both your friends and your potential enemies are. Don't let your Hawaii nursing license fall victim to politics. Let us help you invoke your staffing agency's procedures to head off false, unfair, or exaggerated nursing misconduct allegations before they impact your employment or Hawaii Board of Nursing license.
Hawaii Board of Nursing Disciplinary Charges
To put it plainly, you may be in a precarious situation if patients or others at the facility to which your staffing agency assigned you complain of nursing misconduct. The facility to which your staffing agency assigned you and the agency itself may have interests conflicting with your own, making you a potential scapegoat for those misconduct allegations. Or they may just not see the value in taking the time and making the effort to help you properly contest those early misconduct allegations. Your staffing agency and assigned facility may even determine to forward patient or other complaints to the Hawaii Board of Nursing, believing that they have that duty to report your potential unfitness or non-compliance. Beware the likelihood and risks of Hawaii Board of Nursing disciplinary charges. Get our help, at whatever stage of the allegations, investigation, and proceeding in which you currently find yourself.
Hawaii Board of Nursing Disciplinary Authority
The Hawaii Board of Nursing has clear statutory and regulatory authority to pursue discipline against your Hawaii nursing license, from reprimand or license limitation right up to license suspension and revocation. Hawaii Code Section 457-12 of the state's nursing practice laws grants the Board of Nursing the authority to initiate, conduct, and conclude disciplinary proceedings, potentially resulting in the loss of your Hawaii nursing license. Hawaii Code Section 457-14 further makes it a criminal offense for an unlicensed person, or a nurse whose license the Board of Nursing has suspended or revoked, to engage in nursing practice within the state. You could face a $500 fine for a first offense of unlicensed practice and a $1,000 fine and a year in jail for each subsequent offense. The same statute prohibits you from holding yourself out as a nurse unless holding a current license. Get our help to contest discipline charges. Don't expect to practice nursing without a license.
Hawaii Board of Nursing Disciplinary Impacts
Your risk of Hawaii Board of Nursing disciplinary charges isn't just the loss of your license. Losing your nursing license to discipline would plainly end your staffing agency nursing assignments and employment and cause you the loss of your nursing income and nursing employment benefits along with it. But even if the Board of Nursing only imposes lesser discipline, such as a limitation on your license or referral for substance abuse or impairment evaluation together with counseling or treatment, you could still lose your staffing agency employment and nursing income. Disciplined nurses are damaged goods to some staffing agency employers, who may be reluctant to assign you to a valued facility client, where your discipline could indicate further risks of nursing misconduct. Any nursing license discipline could also cost you nursing licenses in other states or the ability to obtain a reciprocal nursing license by endorsement. You could also lose other professional certifications and licenses or opportunities to gain those other licenses and certifications. Beware the broad potential impact of discipline. Get our defense help.
Hawaii Agency Nurse Disciplinary Sanctions
Hawaii's Board of Nursing has remarkable discretion to impose a range of license sanctions. Hawaii Code Section 457-12 authorizes the Board of Nursing to “deny, revoke, limit, or suspend any license” it has issued, or to take other lawful actions. Hawaii Administrative Code Section 16-89-63 expands the Board of Nursing sanction discretion to include placing your license on probation and imposing conditions for when the Board will restore your license. You should rightly be concerned about the Board's power to revoke or otherwise sanction your license. At the same time, though, the Board's discretion to impose conditions gives us the opportunity to advocate for non-disciplinary relief from the charges. Your best outcome is one that ends up with no discipline. You may be happy to submit to evaluations or accept remedial training. Indeed, you may have already done so. If so, we may be able to use those remedial measures to convince the Board to accept those measures as satisfying the Board's reasonable conditions.
Hawaii Board of Nursing Disciplinary Actions
If you suffer Hawaii Board of Nursing discipline, your staffing agency employer, the facilities to which your agency assigns you, your professional supervisors and colleagues at those facilities, licensing boards in other states and professions, and your friends and family members are all likely to be able to find out. The Hawaii Department of Commerce & Consumer Affairs publishes disciplinary actions against healthcare professionals in a searchable online database. You won't be able to hide your name, nursing license number, misconduct, and discipline from anyone searching the public database. Hawaii Board of Nursing officials may also submit your discipline to the Nursys national nursing license database, where other boards will discover it. You may also have the duty to report your discipline to employers, licensing boards, school admissions offices, and others, on updates, applications, or renewal forms you must submit. Don't run from disciplinary charges, and don't expect to be able to hide resulting discipline. Instead, get our skilled defense help.
Grounds for Hawaii Agency Nurse Discipline
Hawaii Code Section 457-12 states the specific grounds on which Hawaii's Board of Nursing may discipline your license. The Board of Nursing's administrative regulations detail and arguably expand those grounds. Those grounds give you some fair notice of what you must avoid and what charges you may face. But the grounds are also remarkably broad and vague, leaving the determination of your responsibility largely to the customs, conventions, and standards of the nursing profession. Consider the following example grounds and how we may be able to help you defend them.
Credential Fraud as Grounds for Hawaii Agency Nurse Discipline
Hawaii Code Section 457-12 authorizes the Hawaii Board of Nursing to discipline your nursing license for “fraud or deceit in procuring or attempting to procure a license to practice nursing.” Examples include cheating on the NCLEX, falsifying your education or work experience, or concealing convictions or other disqualifying information from your application or renewal form. Agency nurses may more readily face misrepresentation charges if, for instance, their submitted work history is more complex and arguably inaccurate or incomplete. We may be able to help defend such charges by showing that your application and renewal forms were all accurate, and that any inaccuracies or omissions were accidental and immaterial rather than fraudulent.
Gross Immorality as Grounds for Hawaii Agency Nurse Discipline
Hawaii Code Section 457-12 authorizes the Hawaii Board of Nursing to discipline your nursing license for “gross immorality” or for certain criminal convictions “substantially related to the qualifications, functions, or duties of a nurse.” Examples include indecent exposure, lewd and lascivious misconduct, and crimes of violence like assault with a deadly weapon, or crimes of dishonesty like criminal fraud. We may be able to help defend such charges by showing that you did not commit the alleged crime or act, that a court reversed any conviction, or that the alleged conviction or act was not a disqualifying event within the statute.
Unfitness as Grounds for Hawaii Agency Nurse Discipline
Hawaii Code Section 457-12 authorizes the Hawaii Board of Nursing to discipline your nursing license for “unfitness or incompetence by reason of negligence, habits, or other causes.” Examples include significant departures from nursing standards such as violating physician orders, abuse or neglect of patients, and administration of wrong medications. Agency nurses may more readily face such charges if facility personnel falsely blame and scapegoat the agency nurse. We may be able to help defend such charges by showing that you did not commit the alleged acts, others were responsible for those acts, the complainant purposefully or accidentally misidentified you, or that you were acting reasonably under physician or supervisor orders.
Substance Abuse as Grounds for Hawaii Agency Nurse Discipline
Hawaii Code Section 457-12 authorizes the Hawaii Board of Nursing to discipline your nursing license for “habitual intemperance, addiction to, or dependency on alcohol or other habit-forming substances.” Agency nurses may more readily face such charges if facility personnel are unfamiliar with the accused's character and misconstrue normal demeanor for substance abuse. We may be able to help defend such charges by showing that you did not abuse substances, the allegations were deluded, demented, or mistaken, or that you had a medication reaction or other one-time event due to conditions from which you have recovered and that are unlikely to repeat.
Unprofessionalism as Grounds for Hawaii Agency Nurse Discipline
Hawaii Code Section 457-12 authorizes the Hawaii Board of Nursing to discipline your nursing license for “unprofessional conduct.” Examples include insubordination toward physicians, nurse supervisors, or other superiors, disrespect of colleagues and subordinate staff, poor hygiene, and inappropriate dress or demeanor. Agency nurses may more readily face such charges because of unfamiliarity with their presentation, background, and trustworthiness. We may be able to help defend such charges by showing that you did not engage in the alleged acts or that the acts were innocent and professional.
Mental Incompetence as Grounds for Hawaii Agency Nurse Discipline
Hawaii Code Section 457-12 authorizes the Hawaii Board of Nursing to discipline your nursing license for “mental incompetence.” We may be able to help defend such charges by showing that you were only momentarily affected by illness, fatigue, medication reaction, or other understandable upset, that your temporary condition did not place any patient at risk, and that you have corrected the condition.
Hawaii Agency Nurse Discipline Procedures
In these kinds of state license disciplinary proceedings, the accused professional generally has a property or liberty interest in the license credential, requiring the state disciplinary officials to provide the professional with due process of law. Hawaii's nursing practice laws and regulations ensure that the Hawaii Board of Nursing respects your constitutional due process rights. Hawaii Administrative Code Section 16-89-63 requires the Board of Nursing's disciplinary officials to invoke and follow the state's Administrative Practice & Procedure statutes at Hawaii Code Section 16-201 et seq. Those administrative rules require contested discipline cases to go before an administrative law judge for a formal hearing. We can help you invoke those administrative rules and procedures to ensure that you have a fair hearing and the best outcome. These are some of the steps that our attorneys can take under these Hawaii administrative procedures for contested disciplinary proceedings:
- the Hawaii Board of Nursing must give you written notice of the disciplinary charges so that we can help you answer and respond to the charges fairly and effectively;
- the administrative tribunal must conduct pre-hearing conferences to ensure a fair exchange of the Board of Nursing's allegedly incriminating evidence, and at which we can negotiate for alternative remedial relief;
- the administrative law judge must conduct an in-person hearing of any remaining charges, at which we can cross-examine the Board's witnesses and challenge any other Board evidence, while presenting your exonerating and mitigating defense evidence; and
we may appeal to a higher authority any remaining adverse decision on a showing of material legal or factual error, bias, or conflict of interest.
Hawaii Board of Nursing Alternative Discipline Program
Hawaii Code Section 334D-3 formally authorizes an alternative-to-discipline program for chemically dependent nurses under the auspices of a professional program. If you have a substance abuse issue and you face Hawaii Board of Nursing disciplinary charges as a consequence, the Board may propose and accept that you enroll in its authorized nurse substance abuse treatment program. While the Board's offer may sound attractive, beware of such formal programs. The Board's offer may require you to relinquish your nursing license, meaning you'd lose your staffing agency employment, income, and benefits. The Board's offer may alternatively or in addition impose such frequent, expensive, enduring, and burdensome drug testing, counseling, evaluation, treatment, and reporting requirements that you are very likely to violate, resulting in permanent loss of your license, or that so seriously interfere with your nursing practice and life as to make the alternative unattractive. Do not enter into a consent order for alternative disciplinary diversion without our review and advice. We may be able to achieve better relief, more quickly and less costly, by contesting the disciplinary charges and negotiating alternative remedial relief.
Hawaii Agency Nurse Misconduct Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team is available in Urban Honolulu, East Honolulu, Hilo, Pearl City, Kailua CDP, Waipahu, or any other Hawaii location to help you defend your Hawaii Board of Nursing disciplinary charges. Our skilled and experienced attorneys have successfully helped hundreds of nurses and other professionals retain their professional licenses. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now.
