Your nursing practice surely provides you with substantial personal, professional, and financial benefits. If you have advanced your nursing knowledge, skills, experience, and position to the point of supervising nursing students or other trainees, then you have earned an especially valuable professional position. However, state nursing board disciplinary charges alleging your improper supervision of students or trainees can lead to license suspension or revocation, as well as loss of everything for which you have worked. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team to defend your improper supervision disciplinary charges for your best possible licensing outcome.
Employer Interests in Proper Supervision
Your nursing employer has substantial interests in ensuring your proper supervision of nursing students and other trainees. Healthcare employers can benefit from employing nursing students and other trainees. Their wage and benefits costs may be lower, saving the employer on overall labor costs. The employer also gains the ability to recruit, orient, evaluate, and employ new nurses in a labor market reflecting nursing shortages. When the nursing student completes the nursing education, and the trainee obtains full licensure, the employer may gain a highly qualified new nurse without other recruitment, orientation, and training costs.
On the flip side, your employer must ensure that its nursing students and other trainees are not engaged in unlicensed nursing practice, violating nursing rules and standards, injuring patients, and subjecting your employer to civil liability, regulatory fines, and reputational harm. If you fail to properly supervise students and trainees whom your employer has assigned to you, then you can badly harm your employer's substantial interests. Your employer may be the first and worst to complain if you engage in improper student and trainee supervision.
State Nursing Board Interests in Proper Supervision
Your state nursing board likewise has substantial interests in your proper supervision of assigned students and trainees. State nursing practice acts charge state nursing boards with a critical patient and public protection mission. For example, Section 678.140 of the Oregon Nurse Practice Act established the Oregon Board of Nursing, the mission statement of which is to “protect the public through regulatory excellence.” Your state nursing board has one primary mission, and that mission is to keep nurses from harming patients.
Your proper supervision of nursing students and trainees is a big part of that patient protection mission. Healthcare facilities do not ordinarily allow unqualified workers to enter their premises in close contact with vulnerable patients. That's why nursing students and trainees need proper supervision so that their errors do not cause patient harm. If you improperly supervise the nursing students and trainees your employer has assigned you to supervise, then the state nursing board may jump on your errors to remove you from the healthcare facility, not just your improperly supervised students and trainees.
Proper Student and Trainee Supervision Guidelines
Proper supervision of nursing students and trainees follows certain general guidelines. We can help you evaluate whether your supervision met those guidelines against your state nursing board's disciplinary allegations to the contrary. For example, the California Board of Registered Nursing publishes information on the preferred implementation of nursing student clinical experiences. That information includes the following guidelines:
- the student or trainee services should relate to the course of study or training;
- the supervising nurse should provide both direct supervision by continual or frequent observation and indirect supervision through other means;
- the supervision should cover all clinical activities, not just some activities;
- the assigned student or trainee duties should consider the patient's vulnerability and need for nursing procedures;
- the assigned student or trainee duties should also consider the student or trainee's competence and clinical adaptation;
- the supervising nurse remains responsible for the student or trainee's quality of care and
- the supervising nurse should ensure that students or trainees are trained in new care systems.
Improper Student and Trainee Supervision Examples
Improper supervision of nursing students and trainees can take several forms. We can help you evaluate your state nursing board's disciplinary charges alleging your improper supervision against examples like the following:
- the supervising nurse is not consistently available when the student or trainee needs direction;
- the supervising nurse lacks relevant knowledge or skill in the assigned student or trainee nursing care;
- the supervising nurse lacks skill in observing, guiding, evaluating, and correcting students or trainees;
- the supervising nurse assigns duties beyond the competence of the student or trainee without necessary instruction and monitoring;
- the supervising nurse neglects to provide critical correction and feedback;
- the supervising nurse acts unprofessionally toward the student or trainee with verbal abuse, dismissive attitude, and absent respect.
Nursing Board Improper Supervision Disciplinary Authority
Your state nursing board has the authority to discipline your nursing license. State nursing practice acts routinely authorize state nursing boards to investigate complaints, issue disciplinary charges, and impose disciplinary sanctions when finding rules or standard violations. See, for example, Section 40-33-110 of the South Carolina Nurse Practice Act authorizes the South Carolina Board of Nursing to suspend, revoke, or otherwise discipline the license of its nurse licensees on any one or more of Section 40-33-110's many stated grounds. Do not doubt your state nursing board's similar authority to investigate complaints, bring disciplinary charges, and impose discipline against you on one or more of your state nursing practice act's enumerated grounds. Instead, let us help you defend your disciplinary charges.
Disciplinary Grounds Reaching Improper Supervision
Your state nursing practice act likely has specific or general disciplinary grounds reaching your alleged improper supervision of assigned nursing students or trainees. State nursing practice acts frequently include specific references to the duty to properly supervise subordinates. The South Carolina Nurse Practice Act is cited as a prime example. The Act's Section 40-33-110 includes as a ground for license discipline that the accused nurse “assigned unqualified persons to perform nursing care functions, tasks, or responsibilities or failed to effectively supervise persons to whom nursing functions are delegated or assigned.”
If your state nursing practice act does not have such a specific admonition, then it will likely have catch-all provisions addressing violations of nursing standards, incompetent nursing, or nurse unprofessionalism, any of which disciplinary officials might reasonably interpret to reach improper supervision. We can confirm whether your state nursing practice act authorizes your disciplinary charge alleging improper supervision. If not, we can defend your charge on that basis. If so, we may be able to defend your charge in other ways.
Defenses to Improper Supervision Charges
Just because your state nursing board alleges that you failed to properly supervise your assigned nursing students or trainees does not make it so. Disciplinary charges are accusations or allegations, not findings. While your state nursing board should have credible evidence before bringing such a charge, board officials may instead be relying on patient or family member complainants who have poor observation skills, no knowledge of nursing standards, and poor memory, thus lacking credibility. Depending on your evidence, we may be able to successfully defend your disciplinary charges on any of the following grounds:
- you were not the assigned supervisor for the involved nursing students or trainees;
- your assigned nursing students and trainees provided no substandard nursing care;
- you adequately monitored, supervised, guided, and instructed your assigned nursing students and trainees;
- your assigned nursing students and trainees caused no injury, harm, or loss and created no significant risk of injury, harm, or loss;
- the injury, harm, or other loss the complaining patient or family members allege was due to the natural course of disease or other causes, not to substandard nursing student or trainee care;
- you have a long and unblemished record of skilled nursing care, including proper supervision, such that any improper supervision in this instance was an extraordinary aberration not warranting disciplinary sanction or
- you are no longer supervising students or trainees and have voluntarily withdrawn from further supervision, leaving state board officials with no justification for imposing sanctions.
Factors Influencing Improper Supervision Charges
Lots of unpredictable and unfortunate things can happen in nursing care. After all, nurses provide care to patients with significant diseases, injuries, and vulnerabilities. State nursing boards do not bring disciplinary charges for every untoward thing that happens around nurses or even for every rule or standard violation that nurses commit, causing no harm, lesser harm, or greater harm. State nursing board officials instead pick and choose disciplinary cases on a range of variables, weighing aggravating factors against mitigating factors.
Our attorneys know how to evaluate and advocate those factors in defense of improper supervision charges. Improper supervision charges and discipline may be more likely when the improperly supervised trainee seriously injures a patient, the trainee's actions were gross departures from customary nursing care, the departures were due directly to the supervisor's absence or inadequate monitoring and instruction, or the trainee sought the charged supervisor's assistance but could not reach the supervisor. Improper supervision charges and discipline would be less likely under the converse circumstances. We know how to present your best defense case on these and other factors.
State Board Disciplinary Procedures
Your state nursing board must offer you fair notice and a fair hearing on its improper supervision disciplinary charges against you. You have the constitutional right to due process in your disciplinary proceeding. Your state nursing practice act very likely expressly guarantees you due process protections in the form of notice and hearing. Section 678.790 of the Oregon Nurse Practice Act is an example, expressly promising nurses accused of misconduct a hearing, appeal, and other protections the state's Administrative Procedure Act affords. Our attorneys can invoke those procedural protections on your behalf, presenting your defense evidence at the hearing while challenging your state nursing board's adverse evidence. If you have already lost your hearing, we can appeal as your state's administrative procedures provide. We may also be able to obtain court review and relief. Let us help you exhaust your remedies until we achieve your best possible disciplinary outcome on improper supervision charges.
Disciplinary Sanctions for Improper Supervision
Your state nursing practice act likely grants your state nursing board broad discretion to impose a wide range of disciplinary sanctions. State nursing practice acts routinely authorize discipline from probation with or without license restrictions up to license suspension or revocation. Section 40-33-110 of the South Carolina Nurse Practice Act, already cited once above, is an example. Section 40-33-110 authorizes the South Carolina Board of Nursing to “cancel, fine, suspend, revoke, issue a public reprimand or a private reprimand, or restrict, including probation or other reasonable action such as requiring additional education and training,” the practice of its accused licensee. We can advocate and negotiate under your state nursing board's similar authority for remedial relief that preserves your license rather than punitive sanctions that interfere with your professional employment, reputation, and relationships.
Qualifications of License Defense Counsel
The above discussion should have convinced you of your need for our skilled and experienced administrative license defense representation. Do not retain local criminal defense counsel or civil litigation attorneys who lack the requisite administrative knowledge, skills, and experience. Criminal and civil court matters have different laws, rules, and procedures. Our attorneys focus on administrative license defense, and their substantial knowledge, skills, and experience earn them the reputation and relationships for trust, confidence, and respect among state nursing board officials. Our appearance alone may open fruitful channels of communication toward early voluntary dismissal of your improper supervision disciplinary charges. Put us to work for your best possible disciplinary outcome.
Premier License Defense Attorneys Available
If you face state nursing board disciplinary charges alleging improper student or trainee supervision, call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team now for your best possible disciplinary outcome. We have helped hundreds of nurses and other healthcare professionals in state board disciplinary proceedings nationwide.
