Any nurse facing a state nursing board disciplinary hearing would naturally want to know what happens in the hearing. Knowledge is power. If you know what will happen, you might be able to better prepare for it, positively influencing the outcome. State nursing board hearings can also be tremendously impactful on a nurse’s license and career, indeed, in the worst outcome, revoking a license and ending a career. Read the following summary of what happens during a nursing board hearing, so that you can focus your energies and properly prepare. But in the meantime, make your best move. Retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Professional License Defense Team for the skilled and experienced defense representation you need. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now to retain our highly qualified attorneys for your state nursing board hearing.
State Nursing Board Hearing Authority
Don’t question your state nursing board’s authority to hold a hearing on your disciplinary charges. While state nursing boards don’t hold hearings in every case in which they issue formal disciplinary charges, the board has the power and authority to do so. State nurse practice acts create state nursing boards to regulate the practice of nursing. The primary way that they do so is to license nurses and then discipline the licenses of nurses who fail to meet board standards. See, for example, the North Carolina Nursing Practice Act, creating the North Carolina Board of Nursing and authorizing it to both license nurses and discipline licensees. Your state nursing board will have similar statutory authority to compel you to attend a hearing to defend the disciplinary charges against you, or suffer default for your failure to attend and defend. You must respect your state nursing board’s hearing authority. Let us help you prepare and present your hearing defense for your best disciplinary outcome.
State Nursing Board Hearing Grounds
While your state nursing board has substantial hearing authority, your board cannot compel you to attend a hearing to defend your license unless it has statutory or regulatory grounds to do so. And the grounds that your board alleges in its disciplinary charges can have a lot to do with the conduct and course of your disciplinary hearing. See again, for example, the North Carolina Nursing Practice Act authorizing the North Carolina Board of Nursing to issue disciplinary charges on seven grounds, including a catch-all ground of violating any Board rule or nursing standard. The specific grounds include fraud in obtaining your license, conviction of a crime indicating unfitness to practice nursing, incompetence or unfitness in nursing, and inability to practice nursing with reasonable safety because of alcohol or drug abuse. Some of these allegations involve one type of proof, while other allegations involve other types of proof. Your disciplinary allegations may go a long way toward determining what happens in your board hearing. Keep that in mind as you consider the following examples. We can defend you on any of the above allegations or other misconduct allegations.
State Nursing Board Hearing Officers
Your state nursing board hearing will likely take place in a state administrative hearing room that may bear some resemblance to a courtroom. The hearing officer or panel will likely sit behind a conference table or raised bench at one end of the room. The hearing officer or panel may be state nursing board members or others whom the board designates, or the officer may be an administrative law judge. See, for example, the North Carolina Nurse Practice Act referenced above, providing for the Board of Nursing to appoint a panel of three board members to hear a case and recommend a decision to the full board. Arizona, for instance, follows the latter practice. Other states, like Arizona, refer contested cases to an administrative law judge who holds the hearing, recommending a decision to the nursing board. If a panel hears your matter, the panel will choose a presiding officer who will sit in the middle of the panel. Once you retain us for your case, we can describe for you the procedure and presiding officer or officers in your case.
State Nursing Board Hearing Participants
The presiding officer will greet the participants and their attorneys, have them identify themselves for the record, and otherwise direct the course of the proceeding. You will sit with our attorney at a counsel table facing the bench, next to a lectern also facing the bench. The state nursing board investigator or other official conducting the board’s case against you will sit at a similar table on the other side of the lectern. A state assistant attorney general may sit with the board representative, acting as counsel. These individuals, together with the presiding officer or officers, are the primary participants in the hearing, and they are present in the hearing room for all proceedings.
State Nursing Board Hearing Witnesses
Your defense witnesses and the state nursing board’s adverse witnesses are the other significant participants in your board hearing. Witnesses may sit behind you in gallery seating awaiting their turn to testify. In some instances, the hearing panel may instead sequester waiting witnesses in a hallway or other room outside the hearing room, so that one witness cannot deliberately mimic or go to school on the prior testimony of another witness. When called to testify, the witnesses generally move forward from their gallery seat to a seat of prominence alongside the bench, where the hearing official or panel, you, our attorney, and everyone else can see and hear them. The presiding officer or a reporter will swear or affirm the witness to an oath, after which the witness may testify to relevant observations for which the witness has a factual foundation.
Witness Examination at the Board Hearing
Witnesses tend to testify in answer to questions posed first by the attorney who called the witness and then on cross-examination questions from the other party’s attorney. The state board’s attorney would call incriminating witnesses to ask them questions, and our attorney would then ask questions in cross-examination. Then we would call your exonerating and mitigating witnesses, and the board’s attorney would ask questions in cross-examination. The presiding officer may relax the usual court-like customs for questioning witnesses to allow the witness to testify in the narrative or in answer to leading questions. The presiding officer and any panel members may also ask questions.
Attorney Objections at State Nursing Board Hearings
Our attorneys play significant roles in guiding a state nursing board administrative hearing. Administrative hearings are not exactly like court trials. Administrative hearings have no juries. In the absence of a jury, the hearing officer or panel is generally less concerned about the rules of evidence and other formal procedures. The officer or panel presumably knows the weight to give evidence and the inadmissible evidence, such as hearsay, to ignore. Thus, you may not see our attorney or the board’s attorney raising frequent objections to testimony or documentary evidence. Yet our attorneys know the significant objections and points to make. We will be strategic in our use of the evidentiary rules and other customs and procedures that guide your administrative hearing. Expect to see legal objections and arguments at points in your hearing. We may also file a hearing brief to guide the officer or panel on important questions of law, rule, or evidence.
State Nursing Board Hearing Recording
State administrative procedure acts generally require that an administrative agency, like a state nursing board, record a contested case hearing. The recording may be audio, audio and video, or stenographic, with a reporter in the hearing room to take down what each participant says. You may notice the presiding officer admonishing participants to speak only one at a time and audibly, to ensure a clear recording. The recording allows the parties to order a transcript after the hearing to review the hearing for errors and to take an appeal. Your state administrative procedure act may require the appellate officer or panel to rely on the hearing transcript and record. Thus, the hearing record is important. Even if you appear to be losing your hearing, our attorney may be making a winning record for appeal. Indeed, if you have already lost your hearing, let us pursue your appeal.
State Nursing Board Hearing Order
The above discussion shows much of what happens at your board hearing on disciplinary charges. The order of what happens typically begins with introductions. While at a formal court trial, each side would make an opening statement in court on the record, administrative hearings often dispense with opening statements. Each side may already have filed a hearing brief describing the evidence they expected to present at the hearing. If so, the briefs would serve as opening statements. The state nursing board representative typically goes first, calling incriminating witnesses in a sensible order, often starting or ending with the complainant. When the state board representative rests the state board’s case, our attorney begins calling your defense witnesses, including you. Each side may present rebuttal witnesses when the other side rests. Administrative hearings often reserve closing arguments for post-hearing briefs or permit the pre-hearing briefs to serve for closing arguments.
State Nursing Board Hearing Motions
A civil or criminal court trial would typically include procedural motions during the course of the trial, such as motions for a directed verdict. Administrative hearings tend to have fewer or no such procedural motions. Occasional conferences and discussions may take place between the presiding officer and counsel for both sides. But do not expect the presiding officer to make a significant ruling from the bench during the course of the hearing, especially a dispositive motion. On the other hand, if our defense evidence presents such a convincing case for exonerating you, and the state board’s witnesses fail to testify credibly or fail to incriminate you on the charges, we may confer and effectively advocate for a voluntary dismissal of your charge at the hearing. A helpful observation or two from the presiding officer or panel may spur such a resolution.
State Board Hearing Events Outside
The comment just shared about the possibility for a voluntary resolution highlights that significant events may occur at the time of the hearing but outside the hearing room. If, for instance, new information comes forward that tends to exonerate you from the charges, we may be able to use that new information to advocate for voluntary dismissal of the charges. We may alternatively be able to address concerns that the state board’s case raises about your fitness or competence, with offers of remedial measures. Just because we are in the middle of your hearing does not mean that all settlement negotiations are off. To the contrary, hearings can be volatile times when information and views change swiftly and significantly enough to generate effective settlement proposals. Let our attorneys seek your best hearing outcome, both inside and outside the hearing room.
Qualifications of Hearing Counsel
The above discussion should have highlighted for you that you need our skilled and experienced representation for your best hearing outcome. If you retain unqualified local criminal defense counsel or an unqualified civil litigation attorney, your attorney may fail to prepare in the way that administrative hearings require, fail to take proper advantage of the relaxed evidentiary rules, and miss opportunities for negotiated resolution. Our attorneys have a national reputation and relationships with attorneys general and state nursing board officials for fruitful advocacy and negotiations. Let us obtain your best possible hearing outcome.
Premier State Nursing Board Hearing Defense
If you face a state nursing board disciplinary hearing, retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Professional License Defense Team for your best possible hearing outcome. We have helped hundreds of nurses and other healthcare practitioners nationwide in successfully defending and defeating disciplinary charges of all kinds. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for our highly qualified representation.