To obtain your nursing license, you must likely authorize various background checks. Those checks may, for instance, be with the criminal courts or law enforcement agencies for conviction history, family courts or agencies for abuse and neglect findings or restraining orders, or nursing boards in other states for prior disciplinary actions.
Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team if you have background issues that you know may disqualify you from nurse licensure or if your state nursing board is holding up your license or has already denied your license over background issues. We can help you address those issues for your best nursing license outcome. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for the skilled and experienced attorney services you need to obtain your nursing license.
Why Do Nursing Boards Make Background Checks?
Understanding why state nursing boards make background checks may help you navigate your background check issues. State legislatures create state nursing boards to protect the public against unfit, incompetent, unscrupulous, or otherwise-endangering nursing. Your state nursing board owes the public the duty to ensure that you are a fit individual of good moral character, well qualified to undertake the special role of a trusted nurse. See, for example, the mission statement of the Ohio Board of Nursing, which includes to “actively safeguard the public” and to “remove unsafe practitioners” so that they do not injure Ohio patients. The Ohio Nurse Practice Act Section 4723.06 authorizes the Ohio Board of Nursing to undertake those licensing and regulatory acts necessary for public protection. Background checks are a key part of your state nursing board's public protection activities. Respect your state nursing board's need to execute its public protection mission diligently, including by completing appropriate background checks.
Do Boards Have Authority for Background Checks?
In a word, yes, state nursing board officials generally have statutory or regulatory authority to conduct background checks. You are unlikely to be able to refuse or prevent a background check. See, for example, Ohio Nurse Practice Act Section 4723.091 expressly authorizing the Ohio Board of Nursing to complete a criminal history check. Section 4723.091 requires the applicant to authorize the state's Bureau of Criminal Identification to complete the criminal history check. Section 4723.091 further requires the Bureau to check for criminal history with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Your state nursing practice act likely has a similar provision requiring a criminal history or other background check. If your state act does not have such a requirement, then your state nursing board may have adopted an administrative rule for such a check. The Ohio Board of Nursing, for example, has done so, codifying its background check rule at Ohio Administrative Code Rule 4724-7-02. If neither statute nor rule authorizes your state nursing board officials to conduct background checks, they likely have implicit authority to do so under their public protection obligations. Let us confirm your state nursing board's authority and otherwise help you deal with your background check issues.
What if I Refuse A Background Check?
You probably won't get a nursing license if you refuse to comply with your state nursing board's background check requirements. Attempting to do so may trigger even greater concerns over your history and fitness and may be independent grounds for denying your license application even if your history does not disqualify you from a license.
See, for example, Section 32.1601 of Arizona's Nurse Practice Act, defining unprofessional conductto include “committing fraud or deceit in obtaining” or “attempting to obtain” a nursing license. Your state nursing board's officials will likely construe as credential fraud, your concealing or attempting to conceal your background in order to avoid rejection of your nursing license application. Don't fight a background check. Instead, let us help you clear up your background records or show your state nursing board that your background does not disqualify you from obtaining a nursing license. Don't hide; instead fight. We can help you do so.
What Background Checks Will My Board Make?
A criminal history check with the criminal courts or law enforcement agencies looking for conviction history is the most prominent and common background check in which state nursing boards engage. As shown above, state nursing practice acts may require a criminal history check. Criminal history is relevant because it can show an applicant's propensity for violence or dishonesty, both genuine concerns in the sensitive professional role of nursing.
But criminal history checks are not the only background checks that state nursing boards may make in evaluating an applicant's qualifications. State nursing board officials also routinely examine license applications and disciplinary records from other states, gathered in the Nursys national database. State nursing boards participating in the Nurse Licensure Compact for reciprocal state endorsement use the Nursys database to share license information for easy background checks. Most states participate. Even if your state does not participate, your state nursing board's records may be readily available for search by other boards.
State nursing boards may also search other records for disqualifying conditions. A search of family court records or child protective services records may reveal abuse and neglect findings, unpaid child support, restraining orders, or other evidence that the nurse applicant may be unsafe and morally unfit for nursing care. State nursing boards may also check nursing school records for misconduct issues and state records for unpaid income taxes. Licensing officials can cast an ever-broader background check net once suspicious circumstances are discovered.
What Criminal Background Disqualifies Licensure?
Fortunately, not every criminal conviction disqualifies an applicant from a nursing license. Only certain convictions may disqualify you from licensure. State nurse practice acts or their implementing state nursing board regulations tend to define the general classes or levels of disqualifying crimes. Felony convictions are often presumptively disqualifying. So, too, may misdemeanor convictions disqualify a candidate if the misdemeanor is related in some way to nursing practice. Misdemeanors for disorderly conduct or drug possession might be examples.
The Illinois Board of Nursing, for example, informs license applicants that automatically disqualifying crimes include forcible felonies within a certain number of years, criminal battery against a patient in the course of nursing care, involuntary sexual servitude of a minor, and offenses requiring sex offender registration. Section 333.20173a of Michigan's Public Health Code provides a different example, listing the many different felonies and misdemeanors that disqualify a nurse or other licensed health professional from employment.
Whether your criminal conviction disqualifies you from licensure under your state nursing practice act and regulations can be a close and complex issue. Let us help you determine whether you qualify for licensure notwithstanding your conviction. Let us help you make your best case for relief from any inference of unfitness state nursing board officials may draw from your criminal history.
What Other Background Disqualifies Licensure?
As to other potentially disqualifying background issues, nursing license denials or discipline in other states or jurisdictions are at the top of the list. If one state nursing board denies you a license, other state nursing boards may also do so on the same grounds and evidence. Your inability to license in another jurisdiction, though, does not necessarily mean you won't qualify in your current state. The laws, rules, and regulations for qualifying may differ, and your circumstances may have changed since your prior license denial. Let us help you make your best showing.
As indicated briefly above, unpaid child support can also trigger a license application review and denial. States are increasingly using driver's licenses, professional licenses, vocational certifications, and other state-required permissions to induce payment of back child support. New York is an example, indicating that unpaid child support may bar a new or renewed professional license. If you have unpaid child support of more than a small amount and a short duration, your state nursing board may have the authority or obligation to deny your license. Let us help you address these issues.
Can I Challenge License Denial Due to Background?
Yes. State nursing practice acts routinely promise some form of fair notice and hearing on license suspensions, revocations, or denials to satisfy the nurse's constitutional rights to due process. Section 32-1664 of Virginia's Nurse Practice Act is an example, assuring nurses disputing their Virginia Board of Nursing treatment that they may invoke elaborate hearing rights. Those rights, backed by the state's administrative procedure laws, include pre-hearing discovery, subpoenas to ensure witness attendance, a formal hearing before an independent administrative hearing officer, and the right to rely on the assistance of retained counsel. We can help you identify and invoke your state nursing practice act rights to a fair hearing to reverse and correct your license denial.
How Can a Nurse Overcome Background Issues?
We may indeed be able to help you overcome your background check issues by strategically deploying your state nursing practice act's procedural protections. Your state nursing board has a duty to protect patients and the public against unfit and incompetent nursing. Our efforts would be to show that your background issue, whatever it may be, does not implicate your current fitness and competence for safe and dependable nursing care. Here are some of the things we may show your state nursing board to assure it that it can meet its public protection duties when issuing you a license:
- that officials have mistakenly identified a background issue that does not, in fact, exist through errors in searches and disclosures;
- that you have corrected errors in or missing updates to the background records on which officials rely to deny you a license;
- that you have obtained a court reversal, statutory expungement, or executive pardon for otherwise-disqualifying criminal convictions;
- that the background issues officials identify do not relate in any way to nursing care;
- that the background issues officials identify occurred sufficiently long ago as to indicate their irrelevance due to your rehabilitation;
- that the background issues officials identify occurred in such different circumstances that they would not arise again within the nursing practice;
- that you have undergone evaluation, treatment, medication, counseling, and other care so as to ameliorate and correct the underlying mental or physical health issues causing the background issue;
- that you have accepted remedial education and training and have gained the appropriate supervision, mentoring, and monitoring to ensure your ability to conform to nursing standards despite your background issue; and
- that you can present such a convincing case of good moral character, fitness, and competence through your witnesses and exhibits, as to overcome any inference of unfitness for licensure based on the background issue.
Do I Really Need an Attorney for Background Issues?
You don't need an attorney. You need our attorneys for their substantial knowledge, skill, reputation, and relationships in administrative professional license defense. You can see from the above discussion that background issues can implicate a number of different statutes, regulations, procedures, agencies, and agency officials. Because we focus our practice on administrative license defense, we know those statutes, regulations, procedures, agencies, and officials.
So, yes, you need representation. But you need qualified representation. Do not retain an unqualified local real estate lawyer, trusts and estates lawyer, criminal defense lawyer, or civil litigator. The laws, regulations, customs, practices, and procedures of transactional and litigation work all differ from the laws, regulations, customs, practices, and procedures of administrative licensing matters. Unqualified representation can do more harm than good because licensing officials may presume that your unqualified representative is putting forward your best licensing case when that would not be the case. We know what state nursing board officials are likely to require and accept to grant a license in the face of background issues. Let us help you make your best licensing case.
Premier License Defense Attorneys Available
If you face background check issues delaying your nursing licensure, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for the representation you need. We help hundreds of nurses and other professionals nationwide prevail in all kinds of state licensing board disputes. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for skilled and experienced attorney representation.