As a practicing nurse, you don't want to have any issues with your nursing license. Any mark against your nursing license can leave a shadow on your professional reputation, on which you depend for employment security, professional mobility, leadership opportunities, and personal respect, among other benefits. Learn here about what licensing officials call encumbrances on your nursing license. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team if you face nursing license encumbrances and need or desire an unencumbered nursing license.
What Is a Nursing License Encumbrance?
A nursing license encumbrance is a state nursing board restriction against or limitation on the license or other record of license discipline. Think of the meaning of the verb to encumber, which is to restrict or burden, making free movement more difficult. Physical obstacles may, for instance, encumber a path or trail, making the path or trail more difficult to traverse. Encumbrances can also be intangible. Debt, for instance, may encumber an inheritable estate, making the estate's beneficiaries less likely to receive a substantial inheritance.
In the same way, license discipline may encumber a nurse's license, making it more difficult for the nurse to rely on the license for employment security, promotion, or mobility. You should be on the lookout for license encumbrances. Get our help if your license has an encumbrance you want removed or if you face disciplinary investigation or charges threatening an encumbrance. Better to practice nursing unencumbered by licensing issues. Better to be a respected and trusted professional with all the rights, privileges, and freedoms professionals ordinarily enjoy.
How Do Nursing License Encumbrances Arise?
A nursing license encumbrance arises through a state nursing board disciplinary proceeding against the nurse's license. State nursing boards have statutory authority and duties to license qualified nurses. For example, Sections 301.151 et seq. of the Texas Nurse Practice Act authorizes the Texas Board of Nursing to adopt rules to license and regulate nurses. Once a state nursing board licenses a nurse, the state nursing board continues to regulate the nurse's license on the threat of license discipline for rule or standard violations. For example, Texas Nurse Practice Act Section 301.452 lists the many grounds on which the Texas Board of Nursing may impose discipline against a nurse's license.
Let our attorneys help if you face issues obtaining your nursing license from your state nursing board or if you face a state nursing board disciplinary investigation. A disciplinary investigation or charge does not mean that you will or must suffer a disciplinary sanction encumbering your nursing license. We may be able to defend and defeat the charge, keeping your nursing license free of encumbrances. Even if you have violated a nursing rule or standard, we may be able to show state nursing board disciplinary officials that remedial measures will suffice for the board's patient and public protection duties, keeping your nursing license in place and without the shadow and burden of discipline.
What Encumbrances Can Burden My License?
State nursing practice acts authorize state nursing boards to impose a wide range of potential license sanctions, any of which can encumber your license. See, for example, Section 148.262 of the Minnesota Nurse Practice Act lists nine different forms of disciplinary sanctions that the Minnesota Board of Nursing may impose against a licensee found to have committed misconduct. Any disciplinary sanction will appear in your license file on state nursing board records, encumbering your license.
Under your state nursing practice act, a disciplinary proceeding against you may result in a license suspension or revocation. Lesser forms of discipline preserving but burdening your license include warning, caution, oral or written reprimand, and probation. State nursing board officials may also set terms and conditions for your license probation, including, for instance, a license limitation or restriction to certain employers, facilities, nursing practices, nursing patients, supervision of nursing care, or geographic locations. State nursing board officials may also require your evaluation, treatment, counseling, monitoring, and mentoring. If you face state nursing board disciplinary charges, let us help you reduce the risk that you will suffer any disciplinary sanction, especially one that severely restricts and badly encumbers your nursing license.
What Nursing Wrongs Can Lead to Encumbrances?
State nursing practice acts list the many disciplinary grounds on which state nursing boards can impose discipline, encumbering your license. See, for example, Section 148.261 of the Minnesota Nurse Practice Act, listing twenty-six distinct grounds for discipline.
Common grounds for nursing license discipline include cheating on the NCLEX, credential fraud in obtaining your license, patient abuse and neglect, substandard nursing care, unprofessionalism including insubordination and disrespect, nursing practice impaired by drugs or alcohol, medication errors or theft, mental or physical unfitness, falsification or destruction of medical records, theft of patient property, sexual contact with a patient, and practice beyond the scope of the nursing license. Get our help if you face any of these charges or other charges.
While Minnesota's nursing law and many other nursing practice acts list many specific grounds for discipline, the acts also tend to include catch-all provisions in case the wrong a nurse commits is not on the specific list. Those catch-all provisions may go by such terms as unprofessionalism, incompetence, or violation of nursing standards. Disciplinary officials may thus resort to the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics and other similar standards to reach conduct deserving of sanction. We can help you present nurse consultant testimony as to the appropriate standard of care for your disputed actions in defense of your disciplinary case.
Can Others Discover My License Encumbrance?
Yes. Patients, their family members, your employer, other nurse employers, the facility managers where you work, your professional colleagues, and even your family members and friends may all discover your license discipline. As indicated briefly above, your state nursing board will make and keep a permanent record of your discipline.
How Do Others Discover My License Encumbrance?
Anyone may contact a state nursing board to determine whether a certain nurse has a license encumbrance. Employers of nurses routinely do so when hiring new nurses to ensure that the new hire has the required licensure.
License encumbrances are often easier to discover online without having to communicate with any particular state nursing board official. State nursing boards routinely publish their disciplinary action reports online. For example, the long list of Georgia Nursing Board disciplinary actions that the Georgia Secretary of State publishes online, including the name, license number, disciplinary order, and order date. Some state nursing boards also publish disciplinary decisions showing the facts on which the board imposed the discipline.
Discovering nurse discipline in other states involves a search of the national Nursys database. State nursing boards participating in the Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) share their disciplinary information for uploading into the Nursys database. Other organizations also collect and share nurse discipline information. Nurse discipline information is generally easy to discover. You may also have a duty to self-report your discipline to your employer, prospective employers, and state nursing boards when applying for a new license or license renewal. Beware the public nature of nurse discipline. Let us help you defend your disciplinary charges or address and correct your disciplinary records.
How Do License Encumbrances Affect a Nurse?
As the above discussion hints, an encumbrance on your license can have broad impacts on your job, future employment, career, reputation, and relationships. Avoid suffering an encumbrance at all costs with our skilled and experienced defense representation.
The first impact of an encumbrance may be on your current nursing employment. If the encumbrance is a license suspension or revocation, then your employer must terminate your nursing practice. If the encumbrance is only a reprimand or restriction, your employer may terminate your nursing practice or retain you under probation or restrictions. If you retain your current employment, you could lose promotions and pay increases.
Encumbrances can also interfere with your ability to gain other nursing employment if your current employer terminates you or you voluntarily seek another nursing job. Encumbrances can prevent you from getting a new license in another state if you wish to move or can cause another state nursing board to revoke another license you already hold. Encumbrances can also cost you professional relationships, mentors, references, recommendations, and leadership posts. Encumbrances can also impact your personal and community relationships in the form of a loss of trust and respect. Let us help you minimize the risk of these losses by defending your disciplinary charges.
Can I Remove License Encumbrances?
Maybe. Let us investigate, evaluate, and help. State nursing practice acts generally promise accused nurses administrative procedures for fair notice and hearing. They must do so to respect your constitutional due process rights. See, for example, the elaborate hearing procedures the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services maintains for the Wisconsin Board of Nursing disciplinary matters and disciplinary matters involving other professions.
If you failed to respond to your state nursing board's notice of disciplinary charges and you suffered a default sanction, we may be able to reopen your matter for the formal hearing you would otherwise have been due. If, instead, you lost your formal hearing, suffering license discipline, we may be able to appeal your discipline to the full state nursing board, a higher administrative official or a state court under your state's administrative procedures act to reverse and remove the discipline. If, on the other hand, you have lost all hearings and appeals, we may be able to move for your license's reinstatement or for expungement of the discipline on statutory, equitable, or other legal or factual grounds. Don't give up. Let us exhaust all possible avenues for relief until we obtain your best possible licensing outcome.
What Is the Value of an Unencumbered License?
You've seen above some of the severe limitations and losses that nursing license encumbrances can threaten or cause. Consider the flip side of that question here. An unencumbered license can give you several extraordinary advantages. You are, for instance, likely well aware of the national and regional shortage of nurses. That shortage gives you lots of opportunities to seek better nursing employment. New nursing employment may give you higher pay, better benefits, a better work schedule, greater opportunity for promotions, and greater opportunity for additional nursing specialty education. Your new nursing employment may be in a nicer locale or a locale where your spouse can accept better employment or have other advantages.
In short, your mobility can be a huge value to you as you proceed through the stages of your life and your personal and family interests, opportunities, desires, and circumstances change. Your unencumbered nursing license can be like a ticket to perpetual meritorious professional employment, a golden ticket if you will. But you must keep your nursing license unencumbered to retain your license's full value. Otherwise, an encumbered license can be more like tarnished goods.
Do I Really Need a License Defense Attorney?
Yes, you need our highly qualified administrative license defense services if you face nursing license disciplinary charges, are trying to avoid a crippling license encumbrance, or are trying to remove encumbrances from your license as it currently stands. Do not retain an unqualified local criminal defense attorney, civil litigator, or transactional lawyer. The law, rules, and procedures all differ between transactional or court matters and administrative license proceedings. Our attorneys focus on license defense and give us the knowledge, skills, experience, reputation, and relationships you need for your best outcome relating to nursing license encumbrances.
Premier License Defense Attorneys Available
Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for all the representation you need for license encumbrance issues. We help hundreds of nurses and other professionals nationwide defend all kinds of state licensing board disciplinary charges. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for skilled and experienced attorney representation.
