Nurses facing disciplinary charges can suffer great nervousness and anxiety over an upcoming hearing on those charges, especially when they don’t know how to prepare. A disciplinary hearing puts everything in a nurse’s job and career on the line. You have every reason to want to prepare for your disciplinary hearing. You have likely prepared thoroughly for every major challenge in your nursing career. Preparation for your hearing can be key to its outcome, too. Your best move to prepare is to retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Professional License Defense Team to guide and assist you. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form to retain our skilled and experienced attorneys. Let our preparation, advice, and advocacy help you gain your best possible disciplinary outcome. Read below our general advice on preparing for a board disciplinary hearing.
State Nursing Board Hearing Authority
You are right to take a strong interest in your preparation for your upcoming state nursing board hearing. Your state nursing board unquestionably has the authority to hold disciplinary hearings to decide disputes alleging a nurse’s unfit, unsafe, or incompetent practice. State nurse practice acts uniformly grant state nursing boards the power to license and regulate nursing practice, including the power to discipline licensees. See, for example, the Iowa Nurse Practice Act, which expressly authorizes the Iowa Board of Nursing to hold hearings to suspend or revoke nurse licenses. Don’t fight your state nursing board’s authority to discipline your license. Instead, let us help you prepare for your disciplinary hearing.
State Nursing Board Hearing Procedures
How you prepare for your state nursing board hearing depends on the hearing procedures. Some state nurse practice acts include relatively clear hearing procedures. Other state nurse practice acts incorporate the hearing procedures set forth in the state’s administrative procedure act. The Iowa Nurse Practice Act just referenced above follows the latter procedure, expressly requiring the Iowa Board of Nursing to follow the hearing procedures of the Iowa Administrative Procedure Act. Iowa’s Administrative Procedure Act provides elaborate procedural and evidentiary rules for contested cases, which would include disciplinary cases that the Iowa Board of Nursing pursues. One way or another, your state legislature will have provided for your state nursing board’s hearing procedures, satisfying due process. Those procedures are likely to include:
- substantial advance notice of the details of the disciplinary charges, so that you know the defense you must prepare;
- notice of the time, date, and place of the hearing, so that you can arrange your attendance and the attendance of your witnesses;
- the ability to compel witness attendance under subpoenas, so that you can secure the attendance of unwilling witnesses;
- that testimony would be in person and under oath, subject to cross-examination, so that you can challenge biased, interested, or otherwise unreliable testimony;
- that you may present your own testimony and testimony of your defense witnesses, so that you can give an account of your defense;
- that you may present documentary and physical evidence, while challenging the board’s documentary and physical evidence;
- that you may have your retained attorney accompany you to assist you during the hearing;
- that the hearing panel or official would record the hearing, so that you can appeal the hearing results while pointing out defects in the record.
Initial Steps to Prepare for Your Board Hearing
The first step that our attorneys can assist you with to prepare for your board hearing is to ensure that you fully understand the state nursing board’s charges against you and any evidence that the board has to back up those charges. You cannot prepare adequately until you know what the board will attempt to prove at your hearing. The board’s notice of your disciplinary charges should adequately detail the charges. If the notice doesn’t do so, we can help you gain a specification of the charges. The board should also share its investigation report and evidence, including both incriminating and exonerating evidence. Only in that way will you be able to prepare to use, deploy, rebut, and challenge the evidence, depending on its helpful or adverse effect. Prehearing procedures typically allow for some form of discovery, referring to your ability to obtain evidence from the board and other sources. The Iowa Administrative Procedures Act, already referenced above, expressly incorporates its civil rules of discovery, even providing for third-party discovery subpoenas. Let us help ensure that you know what’s coming at the hearing, and let us help you prepare.
Next Steps to Prepare for Your Board Hearing
The next steps that our attorneys can assist you with to prepare for your board hearing are to identify, acquire, preserve, analyze, and organize your hearing evidence. After you learn what’s coming at the hearing, you need to prepare to answer it with your own evidence. We can help you identify and gain statements from colleagues, patients, employer representatives, and others who have helpful information and would be defense witnesses. We can also help you identify and secure medical records, work records, and other documentation that may help you defend the charges. We can also help you identify and secure electronically stored information, such as emails, files, and text messages that may aid your defense. You must preserve anything that may be evidence in your matter, or you could face an adverse inference for having destroyed evidence. Let us help you gather your evidence and organize it for a convincing hearing presentation.
Other Steps to Prepare for Your Board Hearing
Our attorneys may have other steps for you to take to prepare for your board hearing. We may, for instance, ask you to prepare a timeline, chronology, and summary of events for our review and insight into the matter. Don’t do so on your own, and don’t share timelines or summaries with others. Instead, when you prepare materials for our review at our request, they are likely confidential attorney work product and privileged communications. Your journal, timeline, summaries, and accounts may prove very helpful to us for locating witnesses and evidence and developing your defense. We may also ask you to submit to a medical, physical, or mental examination, or to otherwise consult and cooperate with a forensic expert of our choice or recommendation. Our ability to rely on the opinions of consultants in defense of your case may both defend the charges and provide a basis for remedial measures in mitigation of any punitive sanctions. In short, your preparation should include staying in close contact with us, following our directions, and promptly cooperating with any request we have for your assistance.
Final Steps to Prepare for Your Board Hearing
We can also help you with the final steps in preparing for your board hearing. The final steps generally involve planning each cross-examination of the board’s incriminating witnesses, the direct examination of your exonerating witnesses, and your case to mitigate any penalty. Once you have all the information, you must organize it into a convincing presentation with a clear theme for your evidence to be persuasive. State nursing boards generally decide disciplinary charges on a preponderance of the evidence, meaning whichever side has the weightier evidence wins. Your defense cannot simply poke small holes in the board’s incriminating evidence, as a criminal defense lawyer might do for a client in a criminal case where the proof standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. Your defense must instead carry the day. We can help you organize and present your best possible defense, overcoming any incriminating board evidence. If, instead, the board has the stronger case, then we can help you make a case to mitigate sanctions.
Preparation’s Impact on Settlement of Charges
As the above discussion indicates, the key to winning administrative hearings can indeed be preparation, preparation, and more preparation. Yet preparation can do more than simply increase your likelihood of prevailing. Preparation can also influence your likelihood of reaching a favorable settlement with your state board of nursing that avoids a hearing entirely. Perhaps it’s as simple as saying that the best hearing preparation is the preparation that convinces the board not to even hold a hearing. And that happy result can indeed be the case when our preparation on your behalf shows your state nursing board officials that we’re holding all the cards and are prepared to play them adroitly and effectively. Disciplinary officials can tell when you’re winging it and when you’re for real. We know how to show officials in advance of the hearing that they ought to settle. Even in cases where you must admit some of the alleged misconduct, our attorneys also know the remedial measures that boards will often accept in lieu of any punitive sanctions.
Things to Avoid When Preparing
You also have certain steps to avoid when preparing for a state nursing board hearing. First, you should avoid any statement, representation, or omission that might appear in any way to be intentionally misleading. Anything exaggerated, inaccurate, incomplete, adverse, or untoward that you say to the state nursing board’s investigator or to colleagues, employer representatives, or others, the board can and will use against you. We can help you avoid such stumbles by coordinating your interview with the board’s investigator and conducting your other communications. You should also avoid any statement or action toward another participant in your proceeding, including especially the complaining witness, that may look coercive or manipulative. State nursing boards may discipline accused nurses for obstructing a proceeding with threats, inducements, or other attempts to unduly influence witnesses. Don’t get desperate, destroy or withhold evidence, ask for inappropriate help, or threaten witnesses. Instead, rely on our attorneys to advise and guide you, and help you prepare.
The Goal of Preparing for a Nursing Board Hearing
To make your preparations in earnest, you should have a clear goal for your nursing board disciplinary matter. While clients, not their attorneys, set the goals for representation, the goal of a nurse facing state nursing board disciplinary charges is generally to preserve the nurse’s license, reputation, and employment, without substantial burden or disruption adversely affecting the nurse’s practice. You doubtless would rather not face charges. And indeed, your goal would generally be to see your state nursing board voluntarily dismiss the charges at an early stage, even before the formal hearing. Your diligent preparation at our direction, and our skilled and experienced representation, may in fact achieve that result. But even if your matter goes to a formal hearing, and even if the board finds you committed some form of misconduct, we may be able to help you avoid punitive sanctions in favor of remedial measures you have already completed or can readily complete.
Choosing Qualified Representation
You should see from the above discussion about how to prepare for your state nursing board hearing that preparation generally goes hand in hand with a close and confident relationship with skilled and experienced counsel. Do not retain an unqualified local criminal defense lawyer or personal injury attorney. Unqualified counsel will not know how to help you prepare for an administrative licensing hearing. The rules, laws, and procedures all differ from court procedures. For one example, you owe your state nursing board a duty to cooperate with its investigation and disciplinary proceedings. Our attorneys know the rules, customs, laws, and procedures. We can help you prepare in the ways most effective for your successful defense.
Premier Nursing Defense Representation
If you face a state nursing board hearing and want to be as prepared as possible for your best hearing results, retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Professional License Defense Team. We have helped hundreds of nurses and other professionals prepare for hearings and effectively defend disciplinary charges of all kinds, in all locations nationwide. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for our highly qualified representation. Worry no longer over your hearing preparation.