Charge

Moving to the Licensure with a Criminal History forum. Be aware that this is a moderated forum, and all posts are reviewed before publishing. So there may be a small delay in seeing responses.

This question is best asked of the nursing board as they will be making the decision.

Hello, I have a question hopefully someone can help me I see most people already have a license HOWEVER, I've applied for Nursing School in LOUISIANA Unfortunately i have a pending charge (was never convicted) on My background does anyone know if that will make me INELIGIBLE?

To answer your question...you need to contact your nursing school and ask if this charge (you need not disclose the details to us if you don't want to) will render you ineligible for admission. The school will be running a background check on you anyway, so you may as well be upfront about admitting and addressing it. The school gets to decide for itself whether they are OK with your criminal history.

Also, keep in mind that the hospitals you will be doing clincials at will also look at your background check, and they can decide independently from the school if they will allow you to perform clinicals there. So if the school says Yes but one of their clinical sites says No, you're in a bad spot. The school may be able to come up with an alternative clinical site for you...or it may not be able to, and you're pretty much SOL.

I would also work with an attorney (if you haven't already) about getting this charge settled. Hopefully you will be acquitted; if not, perhaps your attorney can plea-bargain it down to a lesser charge or come up with some alternative.

If you read through this forum, you will see that lots of nurses with criminal histories have completed nursing school, made it through the BON, were licensed and are now working as nurses. It's not impossible. It's not always a smooth process nor a guaranteed success, but it is very possible to get licensed.

Best of luck.