Nurses facing state nursing board disciplinary charges and a formal board hearing on those charges may be tempted to settle their charges without going through a hearing. Settling without a hearing may or may not be in your best interest. The consent agreement states that nursing board officials may offer you a good or bad settlement offer. Nursing board officials know, though, that nurses often fear a hearing. Board officials may take advantage of your fear to unfairly pressure and induce you to agree to bad settlement terms, even requiring you to relinquish your license. Don’t make a bad deal out of fear. Instead, retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Professional License Defense Team to help you evaluate and negotiate your best disciplinary settlement without a hearing. And if the board doesn’t make you a fair offer, let us represent you through the hearing for your best possible disciplinary outcome. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for our highly qualified representation.
State Nursing Board Authority over Discipline
When the subject comes to the discipline of a nurse’s license, state nursing boards generally have the authority to do as they wish. That discretion includes proceeding to a formal hearing on disciplinary charges or instead settling without a hearing. Your state legislature created your state nursing board under a nurse practice act. See, for example, the Louisiana Nurse Practice Act creating the Louisiana State Board of Nursing. The Louisiana State Board of Nursing has the express power to license and discipline nurses. That power means that your state nursing board may proceed or not proceed with formal disciplinary charges, may settle or not settle charges on which it does proceed, and if it settles may set the settlement terms according to its discretion. You may want to settle your disciplinary charges, but your state nursing board holds the power over whether to offer you a settlement and, if so, to determine the settlement terms. Your state nursing board holds the power. Let us help you respond to your disciplinary charges in the best way to induce a favorable settlement, if your goal is to avoid a hearing.
State Nursing Board Disciplinary Process
You should understand your state nursing board’s disciplinary process before you decide whether to settle to avoid a hearing and, if so, then on what terms to settle. The state nursing board disciplinary process begins with a complaint or allegations against you. The state nursing board generally assigns an investigator to prepare a report on the allegations. The investigator may recommend formal disciplinary charges. The board may proceed or not proceed on the recommendation. You may or may not face disciplinary charges after a complaint and investigation. If you do face charges, your matter may proceed to a formal hearing or not, depending on the board’s discretion and whether you accept its settlement offer. If your matter does proceed to a hearing, you may win or lose the hearing, either suffering or not suffering license discipline. If you lose, the discipline may be either nothing or anything from a reprimand and probation all the way up to license suspension or revocation. You also will likely have a right to appeal a hearing loss to reverse the decision. In short, a disciplinary process has a lot of twists, turns, and potential outcomes. See, for example, the Colorado Division of Professions and Occupations flowchart on the ins and outs of the disciplinary process. We can help you through each of these steps to your best advantage.
The Role of a State Nursing Board Hearing
Full and formal hearings occur in a relatively smaller number of state nursing board disciplinary cases. Some cases get dismissed after investigation. Other cases get dismissed or resolved by settlement at the pre-hearing stage. Only contested cases involving disputed issues proceed to a full and formal hearing. If the accused nurse does not respond to the charges to invoke the nurse’s right to a hearing, the state nursing board may simply default the nurse on the charges, without holding a hearing. If the accused nurse responds to the charges, admitting the charges and waiving a hearing, the board may impose the discipline it chooses without a hearing or may negotiate a consent agreement with the accused nurse who accepts the negotiated sanction. Hearings thus only decide disputed issues. Much of the work, including investigation, communication, negotiation, and conciliation efforts, goes on outside of the hearing. Even after a hearing decision, appeals may take place and negotiations for a consent settlement may continue. We can help you at your hearing, but we can also help you with the other procedures that may avoid a hearing.
State Nursing Board Hearing Outcomes
If the state nursing board offers you a settlement of your disciplinary charges, you may accept the offer. Whether you should accept a settlement is another matter. When deciding whether to accept the board’s settlement offer, don’t assume any specific outcome of your hearing. Don’t assume that you’ll either win or lose your hearing. A hearing decides disputed facts and charges. Going in, you won’t know the outcome. Your hearing outcome may vary widely depending on any number of factors. Your hearing may result in a dismissal of the charges, in other words, a complete victory. Your hearing may alternatively result in remedial measures, in other words, avoiding punitive sanctions but having to complete additional education, training, counseling, monitoring, or mentoring. Or your hearing may alternatively result in punitive sanctions anywhere from reprimand and probation to license suspension or revocation. Let us help you evaluate your most likely hearing outcome, and let us represent you through your hearing if the board refuses to settle or offers only unattractive settlement terms.
Settling State Nursing Board Disciplinary Charges
Settlements typically occur after the state nursing board and the accused nurse exchange settlement proposals. The board may present an unrepresented nurse with a take-it-or-leave-it offer, refusing to negotiate. When you retain us to negotiate on your behalf, we can help you make counter-offers to the state nursing board’s settlement proposals. We can also initiate settlement negotiations on our own, making a proposal to your state nursing board for remedial measures that you have already completed or can readily complete. Our attorneys know the sorts of settlements that state nursing boards are most likely to accept. We also know how to demonstrate to board officials that you are safe, fit, and competent without the need for punitive sanctions or burdensome measures that would interfere with your nursing employment and practice. Settlements, in other words, can occur through back-and-forth communications and exchanges of proposals.
Conciliation Conference Settlements
We may alternatively be able to arrange a conciliation conference in person with state nursing board officials. Our attorneys know how to advocate and negotiate, sensitively and strategically, at in-person conferences. We have a national reputation and relationships with many state licensing board officials and the state attorney generals who represent the boards. In-person conferences can be a fruitful time for discussion about remedial options that achieve the state nursing board’s aim for protecting patients and the public. Let us arrange a conciliation conference for your case in an effort to induce a favorable settlement before the hearing.
State Nursing Board Consent Agreements
State nursing boards often reduce an oral settlement to a written consent agreement, followed by a consent order incorporating the agreement. Both the accused nurse and state nursing board officials will typically sign the consent agreement, treating it as a contract voluntarily entered into between the parties, after which the board issues the formal order recognizing the consent agreement. The state nursing board, though, has the coercive power of the disciplinary charges and upcoming hearing hanging over the accused nurse when negotiating the supposedly voluntary agreement. That’s why retaining our attorneys is so important. Don’t sign a consent agreement without our review and advice. You may be making a bad deal for yourself, one that you need not have entered into to avoid sanctions.
Perils of State Nursing Board Consent Agreements
State nursing board consent agreements can have several perils. First, consent agreements often require the nurse to relinquish the license. You may believe, based on oral assurances, that the board will soon restore your license. But any temporary loss of your license means stopping your nursing practice. You’ll lose your nursing job, at least for as long as you’ve given up your license. And you may not get your job back. Indeed, you may not get your license back. Consent agreements often condition the restoration of a license on completing onerous terms having to do with drug drops, counseling, monitoring, and reporting. You may stumble in completing those terms and fail to get your license back. You may also have to pay all kinds of testing and monitoring fees, and drive all over to appointments at the most inconvenient times. Even if you get to retain your license under the consent agreement, its terms can be like traps waiting to catch you out of compliance. A violation of your consent agreement can constitute its own grounds for discipline and loss of your license. Don’t settle without our review and advice.
Whether to Settle or Go to Hearing
The big question, then, is whether you should settle your disciplinary charges or instead go to a hearing. The answer depends on several factors, each given their own weight. The facts of your case certainly matter. If the facts are crystal clear, that’s one thing. But in many cases, witnesses disagree and documents conflict as to what happened. Your factual outcome may depend on the credibility of witnesses, their first-hand observations, and the quality of their recollection. The seriousness of your disciplinary charge also matters. The more serious the charge, such as patient abuse and neglect, the greater the risk of a poor hearing outcome, such as license suspension or revocation. Your own work history and disciplinary record also matter. If you have never faced discipline at work or before the state nursing board, and your employer and patients highly value your nursing care, then you may face a lesser risk of an unfavorable hearing outcome. But one of the biggest factors is how you approach the hearing, including whether you retain us to help you identify, gather, and present your defense evidence while challenging the board’s incriminating evidence. Get our help evaluating whether or not to settle before the hearing.
How Preparing for a Hearing Influences Settlements
One of the best ways to get a better settlement offer from the state nursing board is to retain us to prepare for the hearing. Our earnest and skilled preparation for the hearing is a signal to the state nursing board officials that we believe in your effective defense. Our preparation simultaneously gives us the opportunity to share our hearing brief, witness list, and exhibit list with the state nursing board officials, to show how effective your defense looks to be. State nursing board disciplinary officials have their own interests in settlement, too, so that they do not need to prepare for and conduct the hearing. The better we prepare you for the hearing, the more comfortable you also become with the hearing procedure, and the more confident you become in a favorable outcome. Let us help you prepare for the hearing, if only to induce a better settlement offer. Keep your options open. Let us help you obtain your best possible outcome.
Premier Nurse License Defense Representation
If you face state nursing board disciplinary charges and want to settle without a hearing, retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Professional License Defense Team to help you negotiate a fair resolution that retains your license and employment. We have helped hundreds of nurses and other healthcare professionals nationwide in effectively settling their disciplinary cases without a hearing. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for the highly qualified representation you need to settle your disciplinary case on favorable terms.