Under investigation with no word from the BON?

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I was terminated and reported to the BON in June 2014 for inaccurate documentation and received a letter informing me of the investigation about a month or so later. I got a lawyer, responded by the deadline which was in October 2014. I was able to get a job a month after my termination and had it for 1.5 years and now just started doing travel nursing. It's now been 16 months since my lawyer sent my response and I've never heard anything back. When I check on nursys, everything looks good, my lawyer said she's never heard anything... How long does it usually take to hear back? Or do some people just never hear back? I don't want to call the BON because I'm honestly just hoping it got lost in a pIle of papers somewhere. I had only been a nurse for 3 years, it was a dumb mistake to chart something that I didn't do, and I will NEVER do it again. It's just always looming in the back of my mind that someday I'm going to get a letter telling me my career is over even though I've moved on to such good things now. Anyone have any experience with this?

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Specializes in Critical Care, Emergency, Education, Informatics.

1st of all Nursys isn't the place to look. Go directly to the BON, check your licensee etc. 16 months is a long time to not have heard something. Even for the most inefficient BON. If your license doesn't show up as under investigation, then move on with your life.

2. Make sure they have a correct address. If you've moved, the USPS isn't always the best at forwarding things.

You won't get a letter saying your license is no more. You will get a letter asking for more info, when your case is going to be presented to the board, etc. You do get a chance to respond.

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Thank you for replying so quickly! When you say go to the BON, do you mean online or actually go there? I've checked on the site and I couldn't really find anything. But I'm not wanting to go there/call there and stir things up. And I know they have my right address because I had to fill that out whenever I submitted my response. Plus, I got their investigatory letter, I just haven't ever gotten anything since my response to that.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Emergency, Education, Informatics.

Gt to the BON site and verify you your license. Most BON have information on status, i.e under investigation etc. They next thing you can do is to download the board meeting minutes and do a search for your name or license number to see if your name pops up.

While your there looking, check out the reason people loose their license. You'll get a better idea of what the BON is looking at. The vast majority of cases that get presented to the BON don't end up with RN loosing their license. You stand in front of the board with a bowed head and say you learned your lesson and will never do it again. You get your hand slapped and you move on.

You mentioned travel assignment. Have you already applied for other nursing licenses?

Avoiding it isn't going to make it go away. It's still going to be there and you'll continue to loose sleep over it until you know for sure.

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