Your nursing practice is important to you and your family members, employer, colleagues, and community. Your nursing practice also provides you and your family with substantial support and other rewards. Facing state nursing board charges alleging that you misappropriated funds or resources puts all the rewards and benefits of your nursing practice at risk. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team to defend the charges for your best outcome. Don't lose your nursing license, practice, and career to licensure suspension or revocation.
Nursing Misappropriation Definition
Misappropriation of funds or resources is an issue in nursing practice. To misappropriate means to wrongfully take something that belongs to another. Misappropriating is effectively stealing, although usually when the wrongdoer has ready access to the misappropriated items. A thief who spies and takes an unattended purse in a retail store isn't misappropriating but instead stealing. A nurse to whom a patient gave her purse for safekeeping during hospitalization would misappropriate monies the nurse secretly removed from the purse and spend for the nurse's own benefit. Conversion, meaning keeping an item held for oneself for another, and embezzlement, referring to the secret diversion of an employer's funds for personal use, are concepts related to misappropriation.
Nursing Misappropriation Examples
Nurses can have unusual temptation toward misappropriation, especially in hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and residential care. Patients naturally bring personal items into hospitals and other care facilities, particularly purses and wallets but also clothing, jewelry, electronic devices, and other things of value. Patients also naturally give up those personal items into the temporary possession of nurses and other facility personnel while undergoing medical treatment. Nurses can end up carrying around and storing small items worth thousands of dollars for patients. Nurses who also work in healthcare settings have valuable resources, like medications, medical supplies, and medical equipment, worth thousands of dollars. Access can mean temptation to sticky fingers. Consider these misappropriate examples:
Misappropriation of Patient Property
- A nurse removes cash or credit cards from a patient's purse or wallet;
- A nurse takes a patient's cell phone and tablet from a hospital lockbox;
- A nurse removes a patient's jewelry from a nursing home room;
- A nurse removes a patient's savings bonds from a care residence;
- A nurse takes a patient's fur coat after the patient's demise;
- A nurse charges personal items to a patient's open retail account;
- A nurse forges the patient's signature on checks for personal cash.
Misappropriation of Healthcare Facility Property
- A nurse removes medications from a hospital pharmacy for illicit distribution;
- A nurse removes hospital medications from a patient's bedside for personal use;
- A nurse removes hospital temperature readers and blood pressure devices for personal home use;
- A nurse removes bandages and syringes for personal and family use;
- A nurse removes hospital cleaning supplies for personal home use;
- A nurse removes a nursing home's laptop computer for personal home use;
- A nurse removes a coffee maker from an assisted living center kitchen for personal home use;
- A nurse removes a cell phone from a medical clinic for personal exchange;
- A nurse removes nursing home towels and bedding to outfit the nurse's cottage.
State Nursing Board Interests in Misappropriation
Your state nursing board has a legitimate interest in preventing nurses from misappropriating patient funds, personal items, and healthcare facility resources and equipment. State nursing practice acts charge state nursing boards with patient and public protection. For example, the Nevada State Board of Nursing's mission statement is “to protect the public's health, safety and welfare through effective nursing regulation.” That broad public protection mission extends to protecting the nursing profession against public scorn and condemnation. The public has an interest in its confidence in the trustworthiness, good character, and competence of the state's licensed nurses. You won't go to a doctor who is a charlatan or accept the care of a nurse who is a thief. State nursing boards ensure that patients can trust their nurses so that patients accept critical nursing care. Nurse misappropriation undercuts the confidence of both the patient and the public. Don't question your state nursing board's bona fides. Instead, let us help you defend your disciplinary charges.
Nursing Board Authority to Discipline
Your state nursing board will also have clear authority to discipline nurses who violate nursing laws, rules, and standards. State nursing practice acts uniformly, giving the state nursing boards the authority to charge their licensed nurses for violating rules and standards. For example, the Colorado Nurse Practice Act Section 12-255-120 lists many general and specific grounds for nurse discipline. State nursing boards routinely charge nurses with various violations of nursing laws, rules, and standards, resulting in public disciplinary action reports. For example, the online disciplinary action reports of Michigan's Bureau of Professional Licensing disclose the state board's discipline of nurses and other health professionals. Don't doubt your state nursing board's willingness to discipline you for misappropriation. Instead, retain our attorneys to defend the disciplinary charges.
Disciplinary Grounds for Reaching Misappropriation
State nursing practice acts typically include disciplinary provisions specifically addressed to misappropriation crime or broad enough to reach misappropriation. See, for example, Colorado Nurse Practice Act Section 12-255-120(1)(l), listing as a specific ground for discipline, engaging “in any conduct that would constitute a crime... that relates to the person's employment as a practical or professional nurse....” Misappropriation is a crime, not just a nursing standard violation. Your state nursing practice act will also likely prohibit crimes committed relating to or in the practice of your nursing practice, reaching misappropriation.
The misappropriation of patient property is a sufficiently widespread concern, and state laws frequently require healthcare facilities and health professionals to safeguard patient belongings. For example, Michigan Compiled Laws Section 333.20201 requires facilities and personnel to provide means to secure and protect patient belongings. Nurse misappropriation of patient property also violates the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics, which charges nurses to safeguard patient belongings and respect patient rights to control their property. Thus, your state nursing practice act demands that you comply with state law, rules, and regulations or face disciplinary action that very likely reaches your alleged misappropriation.
Factors Influencing Misappropriation Charges
Patient personal items just disappear with a surprising and disappointing frequency. The problem is that so many individuals may have access to patients' personal property in any healthcare setting, whether a hospital, nursing home, or residence, with visiting care providers. The nurse may not have been the one to appropriate missing valuables. The cleaning service, repair service, sales representatives, delivery service, security service, food service, or any other number of attendants and service providers can all have similar access and temptations. However, patients and their family members may nonetheless blame the nurse for the missing valuables. Whether a nurse faces misappropriation charges can depend on these factors:
- Whether authorities recovered the missing items in the nurse's control or possession;
- Whether others observed the nurse having the missing items in the nurse's control or possession after the report of their disappearance;
- Whether the nurse had the only or primary access to the missing items;
- How many others had access to the missing items;
- Whether the nurse appears to have benefitted from misappropriating funds, such as being flushed in unexplained cash;
- Who reported the items as missing, including whether the nurse made, supported, or contradicted the report;
- Whether the nurse made any effort to conceal the missing items;
- How the nurse responds to the investigation interview, and
- The nurse's criminal background history, moral character, and trustworthiness.
Disciplinary Sanctions for Misappropriation
State nursing practice acts routinely authorize state nursing boards to impose progressive discipline on nurses whom the state nursing board finds committed misappropriation. See, for example, North Carolina Nursing Practice Act Section 90-171.37 authorizing discipline from probation with or without conditions through license limitation or restriction, public reprimand or letter of concern, remedial training or education, and fines up to license suspension or revocation. Your state nursing practice act likely has a similar broad range of sanctions. If it does not, and if it instead authorizes only license probation, suspension, or revocation, your state nursing board may imply broader discretion and fashion other sanctions or remedial measures.
Mitigating Disciplinary Sanctions for Misappropriation
The broad range of available sanctions under state nursing practice acts gives our attorneys the opportunity to advocate for lesser sanctions, no sanctions, or only remedial measures rather than punitive sanctions. Misappropriation is, in a way, an odd disciplinary charge in that it does not directly have to do with patient health, harm, or injury. Instead, it has to do with patient loss, meaning property and financial loss, when in a healthcare setting, property issues generally and rightly take a backseat to health issues. We may, in other words, be able to minimize sanctions simply by showing that you are a skilled and devoted nurse who provides critical patient care without injury. Your state nursing board may see that it can deal with your sticky fingers, if you have any, through means like restitution, fines, or professional ethics training rather than license suspension or revocation.
Avoiding Disciplinary Charges for Misappropriation
You may also have the opportunity to avoid disciplinary charges for misappropriation if you retain us promptly upon learning of the concerns of a patient, family members of a patient, or your professional colleagues or employer representatives. We may be able to help you make a diplomatic, sensitive, and convincing explanation of the circumstances, showing your innocence. We may alternatively be able to help you negotiate appropriate apology, restitution, or other remedial relief, again, without involving state nursing board authorities. But beware of making such attempts yourself without our skilled representation. State nursing board disciplinary officials may later charge you with obstructing investigation if you appear to have intimidated or attempted to coerce or bribe complaining witnesses. We can also help you ensure that anyone with whom you speak about the matter does not misconstrue your statements as admissions of wrongs you did not commit.
Responding to State Board Investigation
Also, retain us immediately upon learning of a state board investigation against you for alleged misappropriation. The investigator contacting you for information may have already interviewed the complainant and other witnesses and gathered relevant documents. Investigators can be notorious for feigning ignorance when, to the contrary, they have all the facts. Don't let artful interrogation dupe you into clumsy disclosures that incorrectly or inadequately express your knowledge of the facts or lead to charges of lying, obstruction, concealment, and a failure or refusal to cooperate, all of which could lead to more disciplinary charges. Let us help you give a clear, comprehensive, accurate, and truthful recitation of the facts to the investigator and provide all relevant documentation so that we can help you obtain your best possible disciplinary outcome.
State Nursing Board Disciplinary Procedures
We will have a good opportunity to defend you in a fair hearing. State nursing practice acts routinely offer substantial procedural protections against disciplinary charges. They must recognize a nurse's constitutional right to due process to protect property and liberty interests in nursing practice. Colorado Nurse Practice Act Section 12-255-119 is an example, reciting elaborate procedures for notice of charges, investigation, hearing, and appeals. We can invoke your hearing right to present your defense evidence at the hearing. If you have already lost your hearing, we can invoke your available appeals and seek court review as necessary.
Premier License Defense Attorneys Available
If you face state nursing board disciplinary charges alleging your misappropriation of funds or resources, call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for your best possible disciplinary outcome. We have helped hundreds of nurses and other healthcare professionals nationwide to defend all kinds of disciplinary charges. Get our highly qualified representation to preserve and protect your nursing license and career.
