Securing employment in and around Washington, D.C., is one of the best possible career moves for nurses. Whether working in the capitol, Baltimore, Arlington, or a surrounding suburb, your future is bright due to the abundance of prominent local healthcare facilities. Being a nurse in such a dynamic area also means you have tremendous options regarding your state, your hours, and how you advance your career. However, with all that being said, nurses working in the Greater Washington area must still work hard to protect their licenses if they come under investigation by their state licensing board. If not, their financial stability and future career options are in jeopardy.
If you work at Johns Hopkins Hospital but lose your license due to disciplinary sanctions, it's not a simple process to secure employment at a similarly large D.C. facility like MedStar Washington Hospital Center. Losing your license in one jurisdiction may cause you to lose your ability to work in other states. And if you didn't expect to lose your license and failed to plan ahead, applying and securing one in a surrounding state can take months or years, depending on how deep into your background they look.
The simplest way to protect your future working as a nurse in Washington, D.C., Arlington, Baltimore, and the surrounding counties is to vigorously defend against disciplinary accusations before they threaten your license. The Lento Law Firm can assist when your state licensing board accuses you of misconduct; the earlier you contact our Professional License Team, the stronger a defense we can craft to protect your career.
Call the Lento Law Firm today at 888.535.3686 or contact us through our website to speak to our attorneys and learn how we can help protect your nursing license.
Working as a Washington and Baltimore Area Nurse Across State Lines
Despite ample career opportunities at fantastic healthcare facilities in your local area, you cannot begin a new job in a nearby jurisdiction without proper licensing. The Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) allows nurses to hold a multi-state license, permitting them to practice in other NLC member states without needing to apply and secure an individual state license. In the Washington metro area and surrounding regions, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia are part of the NLC, which makes it much simpler for nurses to work across state lines in these states. However, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania are not currently part of the NLC, though nurses may be able to use their NLC license to find employment in these areas.
There are obvious benefits to this type of system, but massive risks remain for nurses accused of misconduct or policy violations in their home state. Losing your nursing license in Maryland affects your ability to work as a nurse in Virginia, West Virginia, and beyond. You can potentially gain individual licenses in each state, but this will be more challenging after previous disciplinary issues.
In addition, disciplinary issues can follow you even without an NLC license. Nursys is a national database for nurse licensure verification and discipline tracking. Currently, nurses working around Washington, D.C. are impacted by Nursys everywhere but Pennsylvania, which has not adopted the database.
Employers throughout the Washington and Baltimore area rely on Nursys to verify licenses and review any disciplinary actions a nurse might have faced. When disciplinary action is recorded in Nursys, it becomes visible to employers across the country, potentially affecting job prospects in all jurisdictions.
Just like the NLC, this interconnected system means that minor disciplinary actions can cause employment issues down the line, even if it's an ancient issue in a faraway state. The Lento Law Firm can help protect your license by preventing disciplinary investigations into your conduct from manifesting into real-world sanctions. Call our Professional License Defense Team today to get started on your defense if your state nursing board accuses you of nursing misconduct.
Common License Issues for Nurses in the Washington Metro Area
The specific wording found on their websites will differ slightly, but the overall mandate of every state nursing board is to protect the public by overseeing licensed nurses in their jurisdiction. To effectively protect patients from harm or neglect, nursing boards must sometimes investigate misconduct by nurses and punish them if their behaviors violate state nursing policies. While potentially dozens of unique violations exist in your state's Nurse Practice Act, the most common license issues for nurses in the Washington and Baltimore metro area include:
- Professional Misconduct: Many of the most damaging license sanctions involve professional misconduct, from breaches of patient confidentiality to unprofessional interactions with colleagues. Nurses have many responsibilities and work in a demanding industry, but nursing boards are still responsible for addressing misconduct by nurses as they learn about it. All nursing boards disallow nurses from putting patients in harm's way, negatively impacting a workplace's safety, or engaging in illegal and unethical behavior.
- Substance Use Allegations: Every state nursing board treats substance use allegations with the seriousness they deserve. Even a suspicion of impairment—such as a complaint filed by a colleague or a patient—can trigger an immediate investigation and temporary suspensions to safeguard patient safety. Any substance, regardless of legality, can cause your licensing board to become concerned if it has the side effect of impacting your ability to perform your nursing duties safely.
- Documentation and Administrative Errors: High-pressure healthcare environments often cause nurses to make minor, silly mistakes. Slipups will happen when nurses juggle multiple patients, urgent care requirements, and administrative duties. While these are often unintentional, nursing boards can still take action and accuse you of negligence for failing to perform all aspects of your duties. A missing signature or discrepancy in medication administration logs may not seem like a big deal, but nursing boards must investigate to ensure these actions do not conceal underlying misconduct.
It isn't fair for nurses to face severe disciplinary punishments for simple mistakes, accidents, or behaviors arising from overwork. The Lento Law Firm can review your pending disciplinary charges and represent you before your state's nursing board to limit the sanctions you face and help get you back to work. After dedicating so much time and effort to becoming a nurse and helping patients in the Greater Washington and Baltimore area, you should fight to protect your license. Our Professional License Defense Team has experience negotiating with your state's nursing board, and we will fight for the best possible outcome that keeps you out of trouble.
The Disciplinary Process for Nurses in the Washington and Baltimore Multi-State Region
Because nurses often live, work, and travel to different states surrounding the Greater Washington area, the specifics of what your disciplinary process will look like depend on which state nursing board is accusing you of violations. There is a general disciplinary process you can expect, but you can't rely on every state board acting in the same way. However, when you work with the Lento Law Firm, our Professional License Defense Team knows precisely how each nursing board works and what you need to do to avoid serious disciplinary punishment. Whether you are defending your nursing license in Maryland, Washington D.C., or Virginia, call the Lento Law Firm as soon as you learn of pending disciplinary investigations.
Complaint Intake and Investigation
The disciplinary process often begins with the filing of a complaint. Most often, complaints come from patients, family members, healthcare colleagues, or supervisors. In many cases, anonymous members of the public can even file a report. However, complaints still need to contain valid allegations that your state's nursing board has jurisdiction over. If an anonymous person files a bogus complaint, you generally have nothing to worry about, especially if you work with the Lento Law Firm to push back against false accusations.
If your state's board reviews a complaint and determines that it alleges violations of state nursing policies, they will begin a more thorough investigation. Investigators will collect evidence and witness statements from those who may have knowledge of the violations, depending on which allegations you face. Investigators can also generally look at public and private records regarding your previous career, disciplinary, and criminal histories. The purpose of an investigation is to gather enough evidence to allow board members or administrative divisions to make an informed decision about whether to proceed with charges of nursing misconduct.
Notification and Response
Some jurisdictions will inform nurses that they are under investigation and give them a chance to give their side of the story to investigators. Others only inform nurses by issuing a formal notice of disciplinary charges that can result in punishment. Regardless of when that notice arrives, it's vital that you contact the Lento Law Firm Professional License Defense Team to safeguard your career and ability to work as a nurse in the Greater Washington and Baltimore area.
If you do not immediately respond to formal charges and dispute them, the Board may impose disciplinary punishments that limit your license. Providing your side of the story to investigators early on can clear up any misconceptions before they escalate into intensive investigations. Generally, ending disciplinary proceedings as early as possible will help reduce the overall sanctions or punishments you receive.
Formal Hearings, Consent Agreements, and Punishments
If your state nursing board believes that the allegations in a complaint are true based on their investigation, they can issue formal charges that come with potentially devastating license sanctions. At this time, you have two primary options: negotiations with the Board to end the matter through a consent agreement or a formal hearing to contest the charges and facts of the matter. The most common license sanctions that threaten the futures of nurses in Baltimore, Arlington, and D.C. include:
- Warnings and reprimands
- Fines and monetary penalties
- Probation
- Mandatory education or training
- License suspension and revocation
The vast majority of disciplinary issues end with negotiations and consent agreements, ideally carrying only the most minor punishments on this list. The Lento Law Firm can negotiate with your state board to minimize license sanctions, secure placement in alternative disciplinary programs, or even avoid punishment altogether. Consent agreements usually require that nurses admit to some wrongdoing, but the agreed-upon sanctions can be as minor as a warning.
If you cannot reach an agreement with the Board of Nursing in your state, you may end up in a formal hearing to protect your license. The specifics of these processes are unique to each state, and to whom you plead your case will depend on your jurisdiction. In Maryland, for example, nurses present their case to an administrative law judge, not directly to a panel made up of Board members. The judge then makes a written decision on the severity of disciplinary punishment in your case.
Formal hearings require nurses to present evidence, call and cross-examine witnesses, and tell a convincing story to avoid serious license sanctions. Similar to a criminal court hearing, you can't expect to walk into an administrative hearing and expect to find success without careful planning. However, nurses can benefit from the assistance of experienced attorneys to represent them during hearings, as well as from the start of investigations.
The Lento Law Firm should be your first call if your nursing license is under threat in the Washington and Baltimore metro area. Losing your ability to work as a nurse in this competitive, high-salary area of the country means your future career trajectory may not look like what you imagined when you entered the industry. Plus, you may lose your ability to work as a nurse in other Nurse Licensure Compact states, severely limiting where you can practice and what you can earn.
Contact the Lento Law Firm to Protect Your Nursing Career in the National Capital Region
Working as a nurse in such a dynamic area full of opportunity, you want to avoid any situation that can limit your career prospects. The most present and severe risks to nursing licenses are disciplinary sanctions from state nursing boards, and if you are currently under investigation, the Lento Law Firm can help protect your future.
Call our Professional License Defense Team today at 888.535.3686 or fill out our confidential online form to get started on your nursing license defense. The Lento Law Firm has direct experience representing nurses in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Arlington, Alexandria, Columbia, and all surrounding areas. If your future as a nurse is at risk, we can help.
