As a nurse, you know your license is vital for your career and your livelihood. You probably also are aware that if you are publicly sanctioned for any kind of misconduct, a record of that sanction will become part of your public license profile, available for anyone to see. While that may not seem fair, it’s the way systems all across the country work. As a general rule, if you’re disciplined, it’s almost always going to become a matter of public record. There are exceptions, such as where you receive a warning that notes it is not going to be made public.
You may be reading this at some point after you have already been sanctioned. You may be wondering how long that public sanction is going to be part of your public record. And you may also appreciate how important it is to assert a strong and effective defense if you are accused of any type of nursing misconduct. The LLF National Law Firm’s Professional License Defense Team is here to help with that. We can also advise you about what you may be able to do about any public sanctions that are currently on your public record. Call us at 888.535.3686, or fill out our online contact form so we can schedule a confidential consultation to discuss your case and explain what we can do to help.
How Long Will Public Discipline Remain on My Public Nursing Record?
For the most part, if you are publicly disciplined by your state’s board of nursing, a record of that discipline will remain available to the public for as long as the state maintains your record. While we hesitate to say it will stick around forever, as a practical matter, it will be there permanently. This is true for every state.
Because of this, it is vital to take any allegations of misconduct that are made against you very seriously at the time those allegations are brought to your attention. That is when you should contact an experienced nurse license defense attorney, such as someone from the LLF National Law Firm’s Professional License Defense Team. We will be there protecting your rights and defending you against the allegations you’re facing while they are being investigated and afterward, if your state’s Board of Nursing decides to move forward with disciplinary charges.
We can conduct our own investigation of the allegations you’re facing, to expose facts helpful to your defense that the Board’s investigator might miss. We can prepare you for any interview you have with the investigator, to make sure you know what to expect and how to carefully and clearly respond to questions. We can be there with you at the interview to step in if the investigator asks an unfair or unclear question.
After the investigation, if your state’s Board decides to move forward with allegations against you, we will defend you in any misconduct proceeding. This is when negotiations can happen that can make a significant difference in whether the outcome involves public sanctions, a private warning, or a dismissal of the allegations.
What About Expungement? Can Disciplinary Sanctions on My Nursing Record be Removed?
Most states currently have no way for a nurse who has sanctions on their public record to ask their Board of Nursing to expunge – remove – those sanctions from the public record. There are a few states, however, where this is possible in very limited circumstances.
Kentucky
In Kentucky, it is possible to expunge some types of disciplinary records from a nurse’s public profile. In particular:
- Consent decrees can be expunged after 3 years if all the terms of the consent decree have been followed by the nurse.
- Reprimands, in particular “plain reprimands,” can be expunged after 5 years.
- Agreed orders and reprimands with more complicated terms can be expunged after 10 years.
These time periods only begin to run after “the terms of the action have been satisfied.” A nurse cannot expunge an earlier disciplinary sanction if the nurse is currently under investigation or has had another sanction issued against them that is not yet eligible for expungement.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania law provides for very limited types of expungement of nursing discipline. In particular, the violation must relate to:
- Failing to complete a mandatory continuing education requirement.
- Practicing nursing for six months or less on a lapsed nursing license.
Nurses must apply to request expungement. The disciplinary record that the nurse seeks to expunge must be the only disciplinary record that the nurse has with the Board. Any penalty applied must have been served or paid by the nurse. They must not be currently under investigation for nursing-related misconduct. And they cannot have had prior disciplinary expunged.
Illinois
In Illinois, nurses and other licensed professionals who have been publicly disciplined can apply to have the public record of that discipline designated as “confidential” – in other words, the disciplinary record is sealed from public view. Note: this does not expunge the discipline. The nurse is still considered by the State to have been disciplined, but the record of that discipline will no longer be made available to the public.
Under Illinois law, a disciplinary record can be sealed if the nurse requests it and the following conditions are met:
- More than 3 years have passed since the disciplinary offense or offenses happened.
- There have been no “incidents of discipline” since the ones that the nurse is asking to be sealed.
- There are no pending investigations of the nurse by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which investigates allegations of nursing misconduct in the state.
- The nurse is not currently under any IDFPR discipline.
Again, this is not the same as an expungement. The IDFPR will consider the nurse to have been disciplined, and if there are any future allegations of misconduct made against the nurse, their prior disciplinary record will be taken into account as part of that disciplinary process.
What About Records that NURSYS Has About my Disciplinary Sanctions? Can I Expunge Those?
The National Council of State Boards of Nursing operates a nationwide nurse information database called NURSYS. The NURSYS database holds records of nurse licenses, discipline, and other information such as practice privileges. Nursing boards from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands (but not Puerto Rico) all submit registered nurses’ information to NURSYS. A majority of these, but not all, also submit records for advanced practice nurses.
Expunging your nursing disciplinary record in one of the few states that allows that – or sealing public access to your disciplinary record at the state level – will not remove information about your public discipline from NURSYS. And the NURSYS records are public – anybody can search them instead of searching the records maintained by your state’s Board of Nursing or licensing entity.
What Happens if a Complaint Against Me is Dropped or I am Exonerated? Will the Complaint Then Disappear From My Board of Nursing Records?
You would think that if someone files a misconduct complaint against you and your state’s Board of Nursing (or whatever entity investigates nursing misconduct complaints) eventually decides not to pursue the matter, that the Board would also destroy the records of the complaint. That seems fair, but it’s not what typically happens.
To be clear: if a complaint that is made against you for nursing misconduct is dismissed or dropped with no sanctions issued against you, there will be no public record of those allegations. No one who goes to check your public record on your state’s database or with NURSYS will see that the dismissed or dropped complaint was ever made.
What your state’s Board of Nursing or licensing body does with that dismissed or dropped complaint, however, differs from state to state. Most states will eventually delete or destroy the complaint, but not immediately. Depending on the state, the complaint may linger in the state’s records for anywhere from as few as 2 years to up to as many as 10 years, and a few states will keep the complaint on file permanently.
What Can I Do to Avoid Having a Public Disciplinary Record?
The best way to avoid having to worry about people being able to see that you have been sanctioned by your state’s board of nursing is to defend yourself against the misconduct allegations. Many nurses try to do this themselves, and while some may be successful, more are not. And the best way to make sure you have a strong defense against misconduct allegations is to work with an experienced attorney who regularly defends nurses accused of misconduct.
At the LLF National Law Firm, our Professional License Defense attorneys regularly defend nurses all across the country who have been accused of many different types of misconduct. Here is what we can do for you:
- Make sure you understand the allegations. The first step to an effective defense is to understand what you’ve been accused of. When you work with one of our attorneys, we will review the allegations made against you in detail so that you know exactly what the accusations mean.
- Work with you to gather information. Once you know exactly what you’re accused of, you can be more effective when it comes to collecting information or evidence that can be used to defend against the allegations of misconduct. Sometimes that means we will have detailed discussions with you about the allegations. Other times, we may interview other people who might have information. Sometimes we will conduct our own investigation into the matter.
- Prepare you for the Board’s investigation. Being investigated by your state’s board of nursing (or whatever entity does the investigations) can be extremely stressful. We can make sure you meet your obligation as a nurse to cooperate with the investigation process. We can also prepare you for the interview with the investigator that is very likely to happen, so that you know what to expect and how to listen to each question and provide a clear response. Most times, we are also able to be with you at the interview, to protect your rights and make sure you’re only answering clear, fair, understandable questions.
- Negotiate with the Board. The vast majority of nursing disciplinary matters are resolved with an agreement between the nurse and their Board. Those agreements can be and typically are negotiated. Those negotiations can be the key to avoiding serious discipline or, in some cases, can make the difference between an unfavorable outcome that is public and a lesser sanction that is kept private. This is where we, as your attorneys, can be particularly effective, because we regularly negotiate on behalf of our nurse clients.
- Defend you at your hearing. If your case doesn’t resolve itself with an agreement, it will likely go to a formal hearing. We know how to defend nurses in these types of hearings. We will make sure your defense is as strong as possible and is rooted in the facts of your case.
- Appeal when it’s required. We can help you even if your disciplinary hearing has not been decided in your favor. There are different standards from state to state for appealing disciplinary decisions. We can review your case and advise you about your chances on appeal, and then draft and file the appeal for you.
The LLF National Law Firm is Here to Help With Your Nursing Discipline Questions
At the LLF National Law Firm, our Professional License Defense Team knows what it takes to effectively defend nurses accused of misconduct. This is what we do. We help nurses all across the country who face misconduct allegations. Remember: the best way to avoid having a public disciplinary record is to effectively defend against misconduct allegations.
We are also here to answer your questions about the disciplinary process, as well as any other questions related to getting, keeping, or defending your nursing license.
Contact the LLF National Law Firm’s Professional License Defense Team with your questions. We can be reached at 888.535.3686 or by filling out our online contact form.