Reasons to lose nursing license?

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Just curious what are some reasons why a nurse would lose her license or go to jail? Just curious if anyone has any stories?

What is diverting?

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It takes a lot more to lose a license than you'll be led to believe.

Diversion is a biggie. Outside of nursing itself, we had a nurse who murdered her own children. If you aren't doing anything like that, you should be okay!

Nah, the ones I know of, rehab and a restriction not to be left with narcotics keys and back to work in jobs the rest o f us dream about

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What is diverting?

Erm, using the patients narcs. Injecting the patient with five of saline and keeping the moraine for research purposes

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Specializes in Geriatrics, Home Health.
I'm curious how this was discovered. Did the patient call the agency and ask why they didn't get a visit that day, or was it discovered that they were in bad shape after she had facetiously documented that they were fine and stable?

I used to work home hospice. I cannot even imagine faking a visit. That is really rotten.

The clients were babies in foster care. The nurse called the foster parents at home, and left a message asking them to reschedule the visit, and not to tell the office that she hadn't been there. The foster parents were out when she called. The nurse who was caring for the babies heard the message on the voice mail, and called the office.

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

Another user mentioned that it is much more difficult to lose your licence then you are led to believe and I couldn't agree 100% more. From what I have seen, nurses basically lose their license for one of four major categories of infractions.

1. Drug theft/diversion.

2. Gross negligence resulting in serious harm/injury.

3. Patient abuse (physical, sexual, verbal, neglect etc.)

4. Failure to report to or comply with rulings of the nursing licensure board.

In nursing, we continue to perpetuate this potential of "losing our license" in order to justify being overly cautious, limit critical thinking and autonomy and engrain this culture of anxiety and fear regarding licensure to the next generation. I am certainly not advocating being flippant about our practice or not take licensure seriously but I have heard a countless number of nurses prattle on about how they "must do XYZ because they aren't risking their hard earned license" even if they know it (a) isn't necessary and (b) does not help patient care.

Case in point, I once had a charge nurse tell me that we would not be transferring my patient to another facility (to be admitted and receive a service we didn't have at our hospital) because the appropriate referral source from within our hospital wasn't available after hours even though the attending physician, the patient's family and the accepting facility were all on board. This charge nurse told me that "she was near retirement and wouldn't risk losing her license to operate outside of the protocol" even though it was in the best interest of the patient and had zero risk of harm. She used her unnecessary fear and panic to get the attending physician to reverse his decision and the patient wasn't transferred to the other facility. This patient lost their spot in the other facility and stayed in our hospital for another (3) days before he/she was able to find another placement. Without question, the patient's care suffered and we failed that patient because of this nurse's antiquated attitude about "losing her license". When I discussed this with her I offered the counterpoint that I would not want to be the person to explain to the nursing board why I knowingly delayed a patient's transfer to a facility with the appropriate services they needed because I was worried about losing my license so close to retirement. Needless to say, this nurse and I are civil and professional at work but only communicate when absolutely necessary.

!Chris :specs:

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Tele, Dialysis, Hospice.
What is diverting?

Stealing controlled substances from your employer for either resale or your own use.

I used to work with a nurse on a med/surg floor who was diverting. Back then the drug of choice was Demerol. He would sign the patient's Demerol out of the narc cabinet, go somewhere private and inject himself with all or part of it, and then replace it with normal saline and give it to the patient. Two red flags: his patients consistently complained of poor pain control and, even more telling, our charge nurse noticed a small spot of blood on his white scrub pants on more than one occasion because he was injecting into his thigh. She was vigilant and began watching for other signs, and sure enough, they nabbed him one day when he came in for his shift.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Tele, Dialysis, Hospice.
The clients were babies in foster care. The nurse called the foster parents at home, and left a message asking them to reschedule the visit, and not to tell the office that she hadn't been there. The foster parents were out when she called. The nurse who was caring for the babies heard the message on the voice mail, and called the office.

Wow, babies even. i'm glad she got caught. Can you imagine facing your employer and being confronted with the fact that you told the foster parents not to tell the office that you hadn't been there? Not too many ways to lie your way out of that one, especially since there were VM messages to back it up.

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There was a post almost a year ago, "Convicted of murder a a teen and now a nurse". Not the same as losing your license after you're a nurse, but it made for an interesting discussion.

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Specializes in Medsurg/ICU, Mental Health, Home Health.

I had never heard that term until I came here. At that time, I'd been an RN for over a year.

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Cannot speak for anywhere else but in NYS nurses can and have lost or *ahem* surrendered their licenses on grounds of moral unfitness.

This is a recent example: Nurse surrenders license after taking picture of patient's member

There are others: New York State Education Department

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Specializes in ICU.
I heard a story from an instructor that when she worked for another school, a student faked having cancer, school started a scholarship in her name, and she started working on a bone marrow transplant floor. She ended up overdosing and her friend took her to the ER and stated that she had cancer. When the ER doctor started examining her, he found that there was nothing under her bandages. Her license was suspended pending a psych evaluation. Our class happened to attend the BON hearing that involved her case. They permanently revoked her license.

Ind. nursing student faked terminal illness

Wow!! I don' remember hearing about that.

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