i've heard of a story of a philippine doctor who didn't take nursing as a premed, finished medicine, then realized he's not making enough money with his local practice, decided to work abroad as a nurse. He passed CGFNS without a sweat but he had a friend, who owns a nursing school, to produce school diplomas and maybe school records proving to the US nursing board that he did finish a nursing course. Now he has a U.S. license and is working as a nurse and earning big bucks.
i'm in the health profession myself and i will feel cheated if a doctor takes my profession's exams without going through the usual schooling and internship. Much more getting positions rightfully mine leaving me a second choice for employers.
I know how nurses tend to respect thier doctors but, do you just accept it as hands down that some doctors land a B.S. RN's position without going thru internships and nurse school?
How similar is a course in nursing with a medical course? is a nursing course a subset of a medical course? is that ethically acceptable in the nursing world?
If there were any truth to this story and this man was indeed bragging about his deeds, the first person who got some knowledge about it would have reported him to the authorities and the ruse would have been over. It doesn't make sense that a man with the intellect to finish medical school would go around bragging about doing something that he is well aware is illegal. I don't believe a word of the story. Yet I do believe the words of the employment development dept. employee that told me that fraud was often used to gain US nursing licenses. He told me that it was common knowledge; part of the illegal immigrant problem. If you can forge other documents to enter the US, it stands to reason that you can forge nursing school transcripts. I've read media stories about rings of illegal immigrants coming into the country and getting into healthcare. The articles stated that the people, if found out, would just disappear, and reemerge in another state. Nothing new. I don't spend my time worrying about it. The OP should find something constructive to do with his/her time.
Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
i get that you are angry that the other nurses around you aren't doing anything about this, but decide on where you want to focus your energy.
do you want to see the nurses who know about this punished?
or, do you want to see this foreign doctor who fabricated a nursing education punished?
i don't think the nurses who know about this would ever be punished. the reason is because it is all hearsay. he said/she said kind of stuff never holds up well as evidence. boards and other legal agencies want concrete facts. however, if the board wants to pursue the validity of this nursing degree, i suppose they can. but, your state has rules in place for allowing foreign nurses to take the nclex and this doctor must have met them. it is very difficult to prove falsification of records when the records came from another country that is thousands of miles away. how can the authorities in american possibly force citizens in another country to produce records or testify to something like this? all those records did was probably allow this person to be able to take the nclex. passing the nclex was done honestly, there's no way the person could have cheated their way through it, so they do know the nursing theory just like every other graduate nurse or foreign nurse graduate must prove by passing the test.
saying that "these vultures don't even know how to handle ordinary gadgets that a true blue nurse could manipulate even in the dark" is not a fair statement and is insulting to every nurse in the world. every nurse, every new graduate nurse starts out not knowing how to handle equipment. becoming efficient in the use of equipment is based upon using it again and again and again. practice, practice, practice. we all go through that. as a nurse of 32 years experience i can go to work for a facility that uses a piece of equipment i've never seen before. why would you fault me for not knowing how to instantly use that one particular piece of equipment?
the state boards of nursing are public agencies that were set up to protect our citizens. i would recommend that you go to your state board of nursing website where there should be a link to the nursing law. read the law and see if this person has broken it. any citizen who has knowledge of someone who is violating the nursing laws of their state has the civic responsibility to report these person(s) to their state board of nursing. you would do this to protect not only nurses, as a group, but to protect the even larger population of unsuspecting citizens living in your state. it doesn't require an rn or lpn after your name to do it. concerned citizens report healthcare workers to the state boards of nursing and other professional practice boards all the time. and, these boards dutifully investigate their complaints. this is why we pay taxes. so, do your civic duty here because you are one of the ones that seem to have some of the knowledge about this instance. get the ball rolling and file a complaint. give the names of the people who know the specific information to the state board. it will be up to the state board to investigate. right now, none of us can really help you here except to help you channel your anger into productive action.
No you don't need to keep the state a secret. You need to contact thte board of medicine and the board of nursing and relate what you have heard. And you can ask them if what you heard has been reported by anyone else. Now just because someone can't use some doo-hickey think about how many times we have changed thermo meters, bp machines, IV start sets, cold packs, hot packs, I could go over to my sister unit on the same floor and be totally lost. You need to get this puppy off your back and put it on the state. This seems to me to be fraud.
I recommend reporting this person to the proper authorities but also make sure you have the evidence to back it up or it may turn and bite you back later on no matter how good your intentions are.
With this note, I'm closing this thread as I feel that nothing more can be added to help resolve the issue other than reporting it as everyone has suggested.
SuesquatchRN, BSN, RN
10,263 Posts
This strikes me as another "urban myth," this time, targeted against immigrants.