If you have a pending criminal case, you need to seriously consider speaking with an administrative law or nursing license defense attorney before you accept a plea in the criminal case. Your criminal defense attorney, is looking at the criminal aspects not the license aspects, unless your criminal defense attorney is also an administrative law or license defense attorney.
I am speaking with more and more nurses who were involved in a criminal case and did not fully understand or appreciate how serious the State Nursing Board looks at criminal convictions with nurses and NCLEX-applicants.
You cannot reasonably or rationally assume that you will have a criminal conviction and there will be no license, career, or workplace implications in today's healthcare environment. If you didn't know this, you know it now.
I often hear:
* I am being punished twice for the same thing;
* This isn't fair, physician don't have to endure this with their Board;
* The Board acts if I killed a patient;
* I didn't think this was a big deal; and
* My criminal attorney said this wouldn't implicate my license because it is unrelated to my nursing practice.
Most of the nurses retain a criminal defense attorney for the criminal matter then represent themselves before the Board. This is understandable, if you have to choose between your liberty and your license, you are going to hire an attorney to represent you in the criminal matter to keep you out of jail and mitigate the criminal penalties. But guess what? Its not over just because the criminal case has resolved. That's just Part 1 to a saga with at least 3 parts. Yes, 1, 2, and 3.
But please be advised, you cannot Sarah Palin "wink" yourself through a State Nursing Board investigation related to a criminal conviction. It just ain't gone happen.
The criminal justice system with post-conviction monitoring is more concerned with violent and repeat offenders. This is typically not nurses. Therefore most nurses can do criminal probation standing on their head without an issue and actually complete the criminal probation with flying colors and receive "early release" from the terms and conditions of the criminal probation.
Believe me when I say for the most part it is not the criminal probation and monitoring that causes legal drama and headaches for most nurses. This is not said in anyway to disrespect or diminish the criminal justice system or the process and procedure for monitoring criminal offenders because as an attorney, I am an officer of the court.
But if you didn't know or suspect, I am here to tell you, criminal probation is not State Nursing Board probation. Like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz said best "there is no place like home", I am saying "there is no probation like State Nursing Board probation" and you haven't "been on probation" until you are on probation with the State Nursing Board.
Criminal probation and monitoring should not and cannot be compared to State Nursing Board probation and monitoring.
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