I think I disclosed a conviction I never had

[amulam]

Okay, here is my weird/crazy story:

I'm a foreign citizen, and when I first applied for my RN license in the US I disclosed a "misdemeanor" that took place abroad, and got a stipulated license for the first few months. Since then, I found out that this "misdemeanor" was never actually even considered a conviction in the country it occurred in, and I'm not considered to have a criminal background abroad. During that original licensure I was confused about the terminology and wanted to be extra safe. Since I had to pay a fine I had assumed it would count as a conviction.

Now I'm considering moving to another state and transferring my license. So now I'm debating whether or not to disclose this incident again. I'm certain that if I had not disclosed it originally, it would never have come up. However, I'm afraid that it will come up now when I transfer my license, since I did disclose it to the original Board of Nursing. I would very much prefer to avoid the hazzle of obtaining any documents from abroad regarding this old incident, having them translated, and prolonging the licensure process, especially since as I said my record abroad is indeed clean.

I feel like I created a criminal history for myself that I didn't actually have!! Any suggestions?

[Meriwhen, ASN, BSN, MSN, RN]

Tough one.

My opinion: you need to seek the assistance of a lawyer, especially since you will have to deal with a Board of Nursing. The Board of Nursing (BON) is NOT the nurse's friend, and I fear it would take more than you saying to them "I made a mistake in reporting this" to fix this.

Also, BONs do talk to each other. If you try to endorse your license over to a new state, it's possible that the second BON may talk to the first BON, find out about your criminal "record", and deny your endorsement on the grounds of fraud (albeit unintentional) on your part.

Best of luck.

[amulam]

Thank you Meriwhen. Yes, in the meantime I pretty much accepted that I'll just have to keep disclosing it as a misdemeanor conviction if I decide to transfer my license to another state. Getting a lawyer involved to fix it all might be an option, but since this "conviction" is not a big thing anyway, I think it may be less hassle to just disclose it again. Unfortunately it's not easy to even get the required paperwork from abroad, but I will try.