State nursing boards have the statutory obligation to investigate nursing complaints. The investigation process, though, is something in which you can, should, and must productively participate, especially if you wish to successfully defend and defeat the allegations giving rise to the complaint. Your best move to do so is to retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Professional License Defense Team. Our skilled and experienced attorneys can help you put the investigation process to work for your best possible disciplinary outcome. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for the strategic representation you need to preserve your nursing license against disciplinary charges.
State Nursing Board Disciplinary Authority
Make no mistake: your state nursing board has the authority to investigate allegations of your nursing misconduct or incompetence. State nursing practice acts routinely grant state nursing boards the authority not only to license nurses but also to investigate and discipline their licenses. See, for example, the Minnesota Nurse Practice Act, authorizing the Minnesota Board of Nursing to license nurses, investigate specific disciplinary grounds, and discipline their licenses up to suspension or revocation. Respect your board’s investigatory authority. Expect to cooperate with the investigation, with our attorneys’ skilled and strategic defense help. Don’t ignore a state nursing board request to investigate, and don’t minimize the disciplinary risk if you fail to properly respond to an investigation.
Common Nursing Investigation Issues
The type of issue your disciplinary allegations involve can matter to the nature and course of the investigation process. Nursing issues tend to involve questions of fitness, competence, or professionalism. Fitness issues can include substance abuse, dependency, and addiction, mental or physical impairment, criminal felony convictions suggesting a character for violence or dishonesty, patient or colleague assaults, and theft of patient or facility property. Competence issues can include patient injury or exposure to risk due to departures from standard nursing practices, errors administering the wrong medications or dosages, errors in patient lifting and turning practices, failure to notify attending physicians or nursing supervisors of changes in patient conditions, and recordkeeping omissions and errors. Professionalism issues can include disrespect of physicians and supervising nurses, conflict with colleagues, poor dress, demeanor, or hygiene, and unexplained work absences or tardiness. Let us help you respond to an investigation for any of these issues or other issues. Your best response will differ depending on the allegations.
Investigation Process and Stages
State nursing boards tend to follow a standard investigation procedure, whether their rules and public statements reflect that procedure or not. See, for example, the California Board of Registered Nursing’s published enforcement program summarizing three general disciplinary phases or stages. Those stages begin with (1) complaint intake, proceed to (2) investigation and report, and end with (3) legal hearing and determination. Here is how our attorneys can help with your defense of each stage of your disciplinary investigation.
Complaint Intake Stage of Disciplinary Investigation
The first step in the investigation involves the state nursing board’s receipt and evaluation of the disciplinary complaint. Patients, their family members, your colleagues, employer representatives, and members of the public may all complain about your nursing performance or fitness. Some of those complainants, though, won’t know what they’re talking about. They won’t know the facts, the nursing standards, your intentions, the physician’s orders, or other critical circumstances. Your state nursing board will thus evaluate the complaint to determine whether to dismiss it out of hand or to assign an investigator because it has potential merit. Retain us immediately if you learn that someone is considering reporting or has reported you to the state nursing board. We can help you identify, acquire, preserve, and prepare to present your defense evidence. We may also be able to diplomatically intervene with the complainant to correct misimpressions and show no need for a complaint. Beware doing so on your own lest board officials later accuse you of attempting to coerce the complaint and thus obstruct justice.
Investigation Report Stage of Disciplinary Investigation
If your state nursing board assigns an investigator, the investigator will have the duty to gather evidence from which to prepare an investigation report. The state nursing board will use the investigation report to determine whether to proceed with formal disciplinary charges. Thus, how you respond to the investigator’s inquiries can be critical to your disciplinary outcome. Retain us the moment you learn of an investigation so that we can communicate with the investigator, preparing to present your exonerating and mitigating evidence around your interview. Do not respond in a rushed fashion, and do not submit to multiple interviews when unprepared. The investigator may construe errors, inconsistencies, gaps, and contradictions in your responses as intentional lying and obstruction. Let us help you prepare for the interview so that you can answer truthfully, accurately, and completely, without exposing yourself to obstruction charges.
If your state nursing board’s rules permit it, we can also help you review, comment on, and correct the investigation report. The investigator should interview all witnesses with material information and gather all relevant documents from which to prepare an accurate and complete report. But investigator reports commonly include significant errors. We can help you obtain a preliminary report and communicate with the investigator any corrections and supplementation the report needs to ensure that your state nursing board gets an accurate picture of your disciplinary defense. We may, in that way, be able to help you head off a formal disciplinary charge.
Hearing and Determination Stage of Disciplinary Investigation
The last step in the investigation process involves presenting the investigation report to the state nursing board for any action on the disciplinary charges. The board has the option of dismissing the complaint based on the investigation report, holding the case in abeyance pending other actions, or proceeding with formal disciplinary charges. Formal charges may lead to a formal hearing and, if you lose at the hearing, an appeal and potential civil court review. But we may be able to intercede with the board through informal communications and formal settlement conferences to negotiate alternative remedial relief. You may be able to readily complete additional education, training, evaluation, mentoring, and counseling, making disciplinary sanctions unnecessary. Let us help you head off a formal charge or present your evidence at the hearing and take any necessary appeals to defend and defeat the charge.
The Duty to Cooperate with Investigation
If you face a current state nursing board disciplinary investigation, you should be well aware of your duty to cooperate with the investigation. Some nurses have the misimpression that they have a privilege against self-incrimination. That privilege, though, applies to criminal proceedings, not professional license proceedings. The states consider professional practice to be a privilege, not a right. The states also consider professions to be self-policing, meaning that professionals generally have a duty to come forward to report on their own misconduct and the misconduct of other professionals. The Indiana State Board of Nursing, for example, provides by administrative rule that the failure of a nurse to cooperate with an investigation is an aggravating circumstance for a more severe disciplinary sanction. Thus, don’t ignore a request for investigation. But don’t rush into an ill-considered, erroneous, or incomplete response. Get our help.
Investigation Risks
Understand the risks of an ill-considered investigation response. First, if you fail to respond at all to a state nursing board disciplinary investigation and the board issues disciplinary charges to which you also fail to respond, the state nursing board may effectively hold you in default on the charges. The board may presume the charges established against you and proceed to impose a license sanction. The likely sanction for a failure to respond to a charge is license suspension, even if you would have had a valid defense to the charge if you had only taken the trouble of responding.
Also, don’t ignore a request to provide access to your documentation, whether your nursing records, personnel records, school records, or other documents related in any way to your nursing practice. The state nursing board investigator likely has subpoena authority to get records directly from the recordskeeper. The board may construe your failure or refusal to provide records as indicating that the records would be adverse to your defense and would instead incriminate you. That presumption would be especially true if you destroyed, altered, or intentionally withheld relevant records. Beware charges that you destroyed or withheld evidence. You could suffer discipline on that ground alone, even if you committed no other misconduct.
Finally, don’t respond inaccurately, inconsistently, and in an uninformed or unprepared fashion to a state nursing board investigation. Every error or omission in your account can look like a deliberate falsehood. Again, even if you committed no misconduct, the state nursing board may construe your errors and omissions as an attempt to obstruct the investigatory process. Our attorneys can help you ensure that you have properly refreshed your recollection with the available records and that you speak truthfully and forthrightly whenever responding to the investigation request.
Investigation Resolution
The investigation stage of your disciplinary matter may frighten or at least deeply concern you. Yet when you retain our attorneys to help you respond to the investigation, you open an opportunity to resolve your disciplinary matter favorably at the investigation stage. Not all disciplinary matters proceed to formal charges. Our investigation response may convince the investigator to write a report recommending dismissal of the complaint without a formal disciplinary charge. That outcome would ensure your disciplinary record remains clean, which is a huge win for you.
Even if the investigator turns up evidence of wrongdoing, we may be able to make a good case for mitigating any sanction. Disciplinary matters have two parts. The first part has to do with whether the accused nurse committed any misconduct. The second part has to do with the sanction, if any, that the board should impose to punish or correct the misconduct. Our case in mitigation would show the board that it has no need to impose a sanction. Depending on the facts of your case, a strong case to mitigate any sanction would be one showing your clean work and disciplinary record, your strong support from patients, colleagues, and employers, and your remediation of any errors. We can help you design and implement remedial measures that the board is likely to accept as rehabilitating your character, fitness, or competency in the board’s eyes. Let us help you win a favorable resolution in the course of the investigation.
Qualifications of Defense Counsel
The investigation stage of a disciplinary matter is a highly sensitive stage. You must take care not to appear to intimidate the complaining witness, even though you may wish to present to that witness your explanation of your innocence. You must also take care not to misrepresent any fact or leave any material omission when communicating with the investigator, even though you may wish to be open and forthcoming with the investigator and must cooperate. You also have an incentive to present a thorough defense to the investigator, at the same time that you don’t want to expose yourself to further charges in anything that you disclose. In short, you walk a fine line during the course of an investigation.
That’s why you need to retain our skilled and experienced attorneys to help you effectively navigate the investigation stage of your disciplinary proceeding. Do not retain unqualified local criminal defense counsel or an unqualified personal injury attorney. They won’t know the investigatory practices and expectations, nor the substantive law and administrative procedures. Instead, get our skilled and experienced representation.
Premier Nursing License Defense Available
If you face a state nursing board disciplinary investigation, retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Professional License Defense Team to help you respond effectively. Our highly qualified attorneys have helped hundreds of nurses and other healthcare professionals favorably resolve licensing board disciplinary cases at the investigation stage or thereafter at a hearing. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for the skilled representation you need.