Nursing License Defense in the Greater Birmingham Area

Nurses practicing in Alabama's Greater Birmingham area, including Cullman, Talladega, and other outlying areas and towns surrounding the Magic City, frankly enjoy outstanding employment and lifestyle opportunities. You have it good if you are a skilled nurse in the Greater Birmingham area. But beware of Alabama Board of Nursing disciplinary charges. You could lose your Alabama nursing license, employment, and practice if you do not pay due attention to those disciplinary charges. You can do no better than to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team to defend and defeat your Greater Birmingham nursing license disciplinary charges. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now to preserve and protect your Alabama nursing license and Greater Birmingham nursing employment.

Nursing Practice in Greater Birmingham

As a nurse enjoying practice in the Greater Birmingham area, you know the temperate climate, scenic natural environment, affordable housing, diverse economy, and abundant recreational, social, and cultural opportunities, all contributing to an attractive lifestyle. You also know that the Greater Birmingham area has endless nursing employment opportunities at large and sophisticated healthcare facilities like UAB Hospital, UAB Hospital-Highlands, UAB St. Vincent's Birmingham, UAB St. Vincent's East, UAB Health System, Grandview Medical Center, Brookwood Baptist Medical Center, Princeton Baptist Medical Center, Birmingham VA Health Care System, Select Specialty Hospital, and Children's of Alabama, among many others. You also have large and vital nurse staffing agencies like ATC Healthcare Services, AMT Medical Staffing, Anchored Care Medical Staffing, BrightStar Care, and InTime Staffing to broaden your nursing employment opportunities. You could hardly find a situation more conducive to your professional security and development. Let us help you preserve and protect your Greater Birmingham area nursing practice against license disciplinary charges.

Nurse Licensing Authority in Greater Birmingham

The Alabama Board of Nursing is responsible for licensing nurses and disciplining nurse licenses in Greater Birmingham and across the rest of the state. Whether you practice in Birmingham proper, to the north in Cullman, to the east in Talladega, or in other outlying areas like Pelham, Alabaster, Calera, Springville, Argo, Gardendale, or Oneonta, Alabama Board of Nursing disciplinary officials have the authority to pursue disciplinary charges against you. The Alabama Nurse Practice Act governs the licensing and regulation of Greater Birmingham area nurses. The Act's Section 34-21-20 requires that you maintain your license to practice nursing in the Greater Birmingham area. The Act's Section 34-21-25 authorizes the Board of Nursing to investigate allegations of nurse wrongdoing and to impose discipline up to license suspension and revocation in the event that evidence supports the disciplinary charge. Even though the Alabama Board of Nursing has its main office in Montgomery, it has the personnel and resources to police nursing practices closely throughout the Greater Montgomery area. Let us help if you face Alabama Board of Nursing disciplinary charges in Greater Montgomery.

Greater Birmingham Nurse Disciplinary Grounds

Section 34-21-25 of the Alabama Nursing Practice Act lists the grounds that Alabama Board of Nursing officials may cite to pursue their disciplinary charges against you in the Greater Birmingham area. Your practice in Greater Birmingham doesn't make you immune from the many common professional temptations, risks, stresses, and challenges that can lead a nurse into a disciplinary situation. Section 34-21-25's disciplinary grounds include fraud or deceit in procuring or renewing your Board of Nursing license, criminal conviction for a crime or moral turpitude, substance abuse impairment or addiction, mental or physical unfitness for nursing, and other grounds. Our attorneys can help you review your Alabama Board of Nursing charges to ensure that you understand the grounds that disciplinary officials allege against you so that we can together raise your best defense to those charges.

Greater Birmingham License Defense Issues

Your Greater Birmingham area nursing license disciplinary charges likely fall into one of the following three categories. The type of disciplinary charge you face is very important to the exonerating and mitigating evidence our attorneys would present in defense of your charges. We can help you defend against Alabama Board of Nursing disciplinary charges involving any of the following three types of issues.

Greater Birmingham Nurse Professional Fitness Issues

Your Greater Birmingham area nursing license disciplinary charges may first involve your professional fitness, meaning your personal character, capacity, condition, and commitment to fulfill your nursing duties. Substance abuse, addiction, or dependency is one all-too-common issue nurses can face, leading to disciplinary charges. Mental illness or disability and physical illness, injury, or disability impairing nursing practice are other common fitness issues. Your Greater Birmingham area disciplinary charges may alternatively involve your criminal conviction for assault or disorderly conduct, civil domestic violence restraint, or similar misconduct, calling your character for safe nursing practice into serious question. To maintain your Alabama Board of Nursing license, you must show your continuing safety and fitness for nursing practice.

Greater Birmingham Nurse Professional Practice Issues

Alternatively, your Greater Birmingham area disciplinary charges may involve the substandard quality of your professional practice and services. You may be perfectly fit and committed to safe nursing without any of the above personal problems. However, your nursing may be incompetent in one or more ways, such as the methods you use to move patients, administer medication, deploy medical supplies or equipment, maintain sterile conditions, record patient conditions in medical records, and report emergency changes in patient conditions. Patient abuse, patient neglect, and patient sexual harassment or sexual contact may fall into this area of incompetent, illegal, or substandard nursing practice. Your nursing practice must meet nursing standards. Violations of those standards can lead to disciplinary charges in the Greater Birmingham area.

Greater Birmingham Nurse License Administrative Issues

Your Greater Birmingham area disciplinary charges may alternatively involve license administrative issues. You may be perfectly fit and capable of nursing practice. You may even practice your nursing services exactly as nursing standards require. Yet you could still face Alabama Board of Nursing disciplinary charges for violating an Alabama Nursing Practice Act administrative rule. One example involves how you first obtained your Alabama nursing license, if by credential fraud subverting Board of Nursing application review processes. Another example would be concealing criminal convictions or other disqualifying events on your Alabama Board of Nursing license renewal application. Your practice beyond the scope of your nursing license, delegation of nursing assignments to unlicensed aides, or other facilitation of unlicensed practice or practice beyond a license's scope are other examples of administrative violations. You could lose your nursing license to these charges even if you harmed no patient, exposed no patient to risk, and otherwise complied with all nursing care standards.

Our Greater Birmingham License Defense Services

Our attorneys can help you defend any of the above different types of disciplinary charges in the Greater Birmingham area. Depending on your individual case, our defense of each type of disciplinary charge would differ, as the following three sections describe.

Greater Birmingham Defense of Professional Fitness Issues

If your Alabama Board of Nursing disciplinary charge alleges your personal unfitness or impaired nursing practice, then we would typically work quickly and closely with you to form and implement a recovery plan. The Alabama Board of Nursing offers a Voluntary Disciplinary Alternative Program for impaired nurses. Your temptation may be to jump at program enrollment to avoid license suspension, revocation, or other discipline. However, depending on your situation, the Board of Nursing's program offer may require you to relinquish your nursing license or to accept license conditions and limitations with which you cannot easily comply. You may also find yourself forced into drug testing, monitoring, counseling, and reporting that can be unduly burdensome, expensive, and unnecessary. Your early participation in our private recovery program may enable us to negotiate a dismissal of your disciplinary charges because you have already demonstrated your commitment to your recovery.

Greater Birmingham Defense of Professional Practice Issues

If, instead, your Greater Birmingham area disciplinary charges involve allegations that you practiced nursing in an incompetent, substandard, grossly negligent, or reckless manner, then our defense case would focus on challenging the allegations, proving the complaining witnesses' inadequate factual basis, conjecture, guess, speculation, bias, conflict of interest, or other motive, and demonstrating your compliance with nursing standards. Our consulting nurse witnesses may be able to opine that you met all nursing standards under the special circumstances of your assignment, including your limited available support, supervision, supplies, and equipment.

Greater Birmingham Defense of Administrative Issues

If, instead, your greater Birmingham area disciplinary charges involve administrative issues, we can focus our defense on showing that you satisfied administrative requirements, that your technical violation of any requirements did not expose any patient to harm or risk, and that you promptly corrected your technical violation as soon as brought to your attention. We may also be able to make a good defense case out of your long and skilled nursing services, clean nursing disciplinary record, and endorsement from professional colleagues. Alabama Board of Nursing disciplinary officials must protect patients and the public, but they also recognize the shortage of skilled nurses and are not typically out to destroy a sound nurse's career over a technical violation. We have the reputation, skills, and relationships to make that defense case.

Procedures for Greater Birmingham Nurse Defense

You generally have a constitutional right to due process in defense of Alabama Board of Nursing disciplinary charges. Section 34-21-25 of the Alabama Nursing Practice Act recognizes and respects your due process rights by providing elaborate protective procedures when pursuing disciplinary charges. Indeed, Section 34-21-25 expressly incorporates the additional protections of the Alabama Administrative Procedure Act. Our attorneys know how to invoke those procedures to ensure that you understand the charges and that we are able to fully participate in your strategic and effective defense. We may be able to arrange early settlement conferences to advocate for charge dismissal in favor of remedial measures. If unsuccessful, we can invoke your hearing right to present your defense evidence before the impartial administrative hearing official and to challenge the Board of Nursing's incriminating evidence. If you have already lost your hearing, we can make available appeals and seek judicial review and reversal under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Avoiding Greater Birmingham Disciplinary Charges

Even before you face a formal Alabama Board of Nursing disciplinary proceeding, we may be able to help you head off Greater Birmingham area nursing license disciplinary charges. Patients are frequent disciplinary complainants. But patients are also often the least reliable witnesses to a nursing standard violation because of their poor mental condition, poor memory, lack of knowledge of nursing standards, and natural stress over their poor medical condition and the need for invasive medical services and nursing care. When you learn that a patient or patient's family member is considering complaining to the Alabama Board of Nursing over your services, we may be able to help you sensitively present a sound and convincing explanation for your conduct, showing that you met all nursing standards. If, instead, your professional colleagues or employer representatives raise disciplinary concerns and threaten to report, we may be able to present our consulting nurse witness's opinion that your care met standards under the circumstances, heading off a complaint and relieving the colleague of any concern over a duty to report. Don't try this approach on your own, lest complainants believe you are coercing them not to complain justly about your actual violation. Instead, let us help evaluate and make an appropriately sensitive and sound explanation.

Premier Greater Birmingham Nurse License Defense

If you are a nurse facing license disciplinary charges in the Greater Birmingham area, including Cullman, Talladega, and other outlying areas, you can do no better than to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for the skilled and experienced defense representation you need. We help nurses and other professionals in Greater Birmingham and across Alabama defend state licensing board disciplinary charges. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for our highly qualified attorney representation.

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Attorney Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm are committed to answering your questions about Physician License Defense, Nursing License Defense, Pharmacist License Defense, Psychologist and Psychiatrist License Defense, Dental License Defense, Chiropractic License Defense, Real Estate License Defense, Professional Counseling License Defense, and Other Professional Licenses law issues nationwide.
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