Nurses holding a Missouri Nursing Board license have a valuable professional credential. You know the rewards of your Missouri nursing practice, including not only the satisfaction of providing patients with critical nursing care but also the professional reputation, standing, security, and income. Missouri also has a strong and stable economy, a large and friendly population, and a strong commitment to providing comprehensive healthcare services. Yet you also likely know the hazard that criminal arrest, charges, and conviction can present to your Missouri nursing license. Nurses in Missouri and nationwide lose their licenses to discipline for criminal convictions. If you face Missouri Nursing Board disciplinary charges relating to a criminal arrest, charge, or conviction, your best move is to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for your skilled and experienced license defense. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for our highly qualified attorney representation and your best possible disciplinary outcome.
Missouri Nurse Criminal Arrests
Missouri nurses face the same risks of criminal arrest, charge, and conviction as nurses in other states face and the public faces. Nurses have no immunity to criminal conviction. A Journal of Nursing Regulation survey found that around 10% of nursing board disciplinary actions involve criminal convictions and that nearly 5,000 nurses nationwide suffered license discipline related to criminal convictions. Male nurses and licensed practical nurses (LPNs) may face convictions more frequently than other registered nurses and female nurses, but all nurses face similar conviction risks, especially for drug crimes, drunk driving crimes, and theft crimes. While the Journal of Nursing Regulation survey found that license probation and suspensions were common, violent crimes and crimes involving patient abuse drew stronger license revocations. Nearly 20% of nurses also fail to disclose prior criminal convictions, another ground for discipline in the form of credential fraud. Let us help if you, like other nurses, face criminal issues threatening your license.
Missouri Nurse Licensure Authority
You must retain the Missouri Nursing Board license you currently hold in the face of disciplinary charges relating to criminal issues, if you intend to continue your nursing practice in the state. Section 335.021 of Missouri's Nursing Practice Act creates the Missouri Nursing Board with the authority to license and regulate nurses practicing in the state. The Act's Section 335.056 provides that unlicensed practice is illegal and carries penalties prescribed in other Nursing Practice Act sections. The Act's Section 335.096 further provides that any individual practicing nursing in the state without a Nursing Board license commits a Missouri Class E felony, punishable by up to four years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Given Missouri's participation in the national Nurse Licensure Compact, your loss of your Missouri nursing license can prevent you from holding or gaining a nursing license in any other Compact state. Let us help you defend your Missouri license against disciplinary charges relating to your criminal issues.
Missouri Nurse Licensure Requirements
You met certain requirements to obtain your Missouri Nursing Board license. Those requirements continue in place as long as you hold your license. Missouri's Nursing Practice Act Section 355.046 requires that you demonstrate your continuing good moral character to retain your nursing license, in the face of your criminal issues. Criminal convictions that indicate corrupt character, violent character, a character for impaired practice, and other character presenting risks to patients, healthcare colleagues, and healthcare facilities and operations place your continued licensure at risk. Let us help you deal openly and responsibly with the Missouri Nursing Board relative to retaining your license in the face of your criminal issues.
Missouri Nurse License Discipline
Missouri Nursing Practice Act Section 335.066 authorizes the Nursing Board to suspend, revoke, refuse to renew, or otherwise discipline your nursing license on the specified grounds. The articulated grounds expressly include certain criminal convictions. The articulated grounds further include certain conduct typically related to specific criminal convictions, such as fraudulent conduct, dishonest conduct, intimidation or coercion, influencing patients into sexual activity, listing on the federal sex offender registry, intentionally causing physical or emotional harm to patients, drug law violations, violations of professional trust, habitual intoxication, diverting controlled substances, and conduct exposing patients or the public to serious danger. Let us help you defend and defeat your disciplinary charges relating to your criminal issues.
Differences Among Arrest, Charge, and Conviction
Several factors can aggravate or ameliorate your Missouri Nursing Board disciplinary charges relating to your criminal issues. The nature, status, and outcome of your criminal proceeding are some of the more significant factors. Our attorneys know how to give appropriate context before Nursing Board disciplinary officials regarding the status and outcome of your criminal proceeding, as the following subsections describe.
Potential Effects of Missouri Criminal Arrest
Criminal arrests involve law enforcement officers stopping and detaining the criminal suspect for further investigation. Arrests differ from a criminal charge or conviction. Police frequently make arrests without pursuing charges and convictions. Arrests require only probable cause for the officer to believe that the suspect committed a crime. Probable cause is much less than admissible evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Even if police pursue charges following an arrest, the prosecutor who would authorize and file the charges might disagree that the circumstances and evidence warranted proceeding with charges.
Missouri Nursing Board disciplinary officials may thus find themselves compelled to ignore and excuse your arrest if no criminal charges ensue. On the other hand, your arrest may point to a disciplinary offense, even without ensuing criminal charges. Let us help you give context to your arrest and innocence, as necessary to avoid Nursing Board disciplinary charges.
Potential Effects of Missouri Criminal Charges
If the prosecutor reviewing your arrest determines that the evidence and other circumstances warrant charges, then the prosecutor prepares and files the criminal complaint in court, constituting the charges. Yet charges do not mean that you necessarily committed the charged crime. You may still be innocent. The prosecutor may abandon the charges, the court may dismiss the charges, or a jury may acquit on the charges.
Missouri Nursing Board disciplinary officials may thus find themselves constrained to ignore your criminal charges if they do not result in a conviction. On the other hand, your criminal charges indicate that the police had probable cause for arrest and the prosecutor had some evidence, whether or not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Nursing Board disciplinary officials may thus determine to investigate the underlying facts and circumstances, and may proceed with discipline if that evidence indicates a disciplinable offense. Smoke suggests fire. Let us help you show the Nursing Board that your criminal charge does not relate to any disciplinary offense.
Potential Effects of a Missouri Criminal Conviction
Suppose your criminal charges result in a criminal conviction, whether by bench trial, jury trial, or guilty or no contest plea, Missouri Nursing Board disciplinary officials may take that outcome as presumptive evidence that you committed the charged misconduct. The Nursing Board may refuse to listen to your disagreement with the conviction, unless of course your criminal defense attorney obtains a reversal of the conviction. Yet your criminal conviction, while establishing the underlying wrong, may not necessarily require or compel the Nursing Board to suspend or revoke your license. Your disciplinary outcome may well depend on the nature and reprehensibility of the charges and related issues. Let us help you advocate before the Nursing Board that your conviction was not for a disqualifying offense.
Differences Among Specific Crime Charges
Missouri Nursing Practice Act Section 335.066 authorizes the Nursing Board to suspend, revoke, refuse to renew, or otherwise discipline your license for conviction of any of these three categories of criminal offenses: (1) for offenses “reasonably related to the qualifications, functions or duties” of the nursing profession; (2) for offenses “an essential element of which is fraud, dishonesty or an act of violence”; or (3) for offenses “involving moral turpitude....” Importantly, Section 335.066 grants the Nursing Board discretion to impose or not impose discipline for these three categories of criminal offense. Unlike in some other states, Section 335.066 does not mandate disqualification. Consider in the following subsections how our attorneys can help you defend disciplinary charges relating to each of these three kinds of criminal convictions.
Potential Effects of Missouri Crimes Related to Nursing
Crimes related to nursing practice can lead to discipline because of the Nursing Board's obligation to protect patients and the public. Crimes relating to nursing practice can include patient abuse or sexual assault, assault, harassment, or stalking of healthcare colleagues, diversion of facility drugs or supplies, theft, coercion, or conversion of patient personal property, and embezzlement of facility funds. Our attorneys can give appropriate context to these crimes before the Missouri Nursing Board, depending on your case facts and circumstances, to relieve the Board of disciplinary concerns.
Potential Effects of Missouri Violent Crimes
Violent crimes can likewise lead to discipline because of the Nursing Board's duty to protect patients and the public. Violent crimes include homicide, assault, sexual assault, robbery, terrorism, arson, and domestic violence. Our attorneys can once again help you show the Nursing Board the full context for these crimes and your rehabilitation, in ways that may relieve the Board of concerns over your nursing practice. Your violent crime may have borne no relationship to nursing practice, have arisen out of extraordinary one-time circumstances, and been addressed through appropriate remedial measures.
Potential Effects of Missouri Crimes Involving Dishonesty
Crimes involving dishonesty can likewise lead to discipline because of the Nursing Board's concerns that your dishonesty may threaten the safety of patients, the security of your healthcare facility, or your facility's orderly operations. Dishonesty crimes include criminal fraud, theft, identity theft, money laundering, forgery, conversion, and embezzlement. Our attorneys may be able to show that your criminal dishonesty bore no relationship to nursing practice and that you have undergone appropriate rehabilitation to assure the Board of no likelihood of its repetition.
Potential Effects of Missouri Crimes of Moral Turpitude
Crimes of moral turpitude can likewise lead to discipline because of the Nursing Board's concern that your character will offend, embarrass, oppress, and corrupt patients or healthcare colleagues, and expose the nursing profession to public condemnation. Crimes of moral turpitude include kidnapping, drug dealing, indecent exposure, corruption of a minor, and lewd and lascivious misconduct. We may be able to show Nursing Board officials that you have undergone effective rehabilitation of your moral character, that your crime involved an extraordinary one-time event triggered by conditions not likely to repeat, that you present no risk of corruption to anyone, and that your nursing services are valuable, needed, and competent.
Missouri Nurse Duty to Report Criminal Issues
Missouri Nursing Practice Act Section 335.066 authorizes discipline for a nurse's failure to truthfully answer Nursing Board inquiries regarding criminal convictions or to disclose convictions on license renewal applications. You thus have a duty to report your criminal conviction, although not your criminal arrest or charge short of conviction. If you do not make an accurate and timely disclosure, you may face additional credential fraud charges. The manner in which you make your disclosure, though, may affect how the Nursing Board treats your conviction. Let us help you determine when, whether, and how to disclose your criminal conviction, and assist you with the disclosure, for your best disciplinary outcome.
Missouri Nursing License Disciplinary Procedures
Missouri Nursing Practice Act Section 355.066 requires the Nursing Board to conduct disciplinary proceedings according to the due process protections of Missouri Statutes Chapter 621 providing for administrative notice, discovery, hearing, appeal, and civil court review in appropriate cases. Our attorneys know how to invoke those administrative procedures for your best defense. Don't retain unqualified counsel. Get our highly qualified attorney representation.
Premier Missouri Nursing License Defense
If you are a nurse licensed for practice in Missouri but face criminal arrest, charge, or conviction, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for your best license disciplinary outcome before the Missouri Nursing Board. We help hundreds of nurses and other professionals in Missouri and nationwide with disciplinary defense involving criminal and other issues. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for our skilled and experienced attorney representation.
