For many professionals including nurses, your license is the basis for your career. If your license is under investigation, or if it has been revoked, you should get legal advice right away to help resolve the situation. An experienced attorney will be able to help you to prepare for an administrative hearing or appeal, to resolve any complaints, and to have your professional licensing restored so you can continue to practice in the field you love.
Nursing licenses are the basis for professional practice
With more than 3.1 million registered nurses (RNs) in the country, nursing is the largest healthcare profession in the country. Around 85% of the RNs in the country are employed in nursing. Most people who become nurses choose to do so because they have a vocation for helping people. Like many other professions including healthcare and law, nursing requires practitioners to acquire and maintain the appropriate professional licensing in order to continue their profession.
As a profession, nursing can be both very rewarding and very stressful. Most medical institutions are chronically understaffed, and staff are overworked and under great pressure at all times. As many as 91% of the nursing homes in the U.S. don’t have enough staff to properly care for patients.
Medical malpractice suits involving nurses
With the highly stressful working conditions typically found in medical establishments large and small, mishaps do occur. Complaints by patients can lead to medical malpractice lawsuits, which may jeopardize careers. Nurses are increasingly being named along with physicians in medical malpractice suits, and such complaints jeopardize their nurse licenses as well.
The commonest complaints which result in the loss of professional licensing are:
- dereliction of duties
- gross negligence while caring for a patient
- abuse of alcohol or drugs, which includes controlled substances
While the number of complaints that succeed is small compared to the total number filed, the process can be frightening and disorientating for someone who is the target of such a complaint. It is difficult for an individual to face such proceedings alone. Hiring a professional licensing attorney at the earliest possible stage can help to ensure a positive outcome.
Complaints against nursing professionals
Complaints and medical malpractice suits bring the individual’s work under close scrutiny. Only a small number of such actions are actually upheld, but for the persons involved, this can be a frightening and demoralizing process. At a time like this, a specialist nursing license lawyer can offer the help and encouragement needed to see things through to a positive outcome.
In the ten years between 2003 and 2013, a total of 67,368 adverse actions were brought against licensed practical nurses (LPNs) in the U.S., according to a report by the NPDB. During this time, the number of LPNs in the country was 49,543. Of the thousands of claims, only 399 resulted in medical malpractice payments, and 10,579 of the LPNs were reinstated.
If you are facing investigation and/ or the possibility of revocation or suspension of your professional license, a nurse defense attorney can help you. Such proceedings can be impossible for an individual to tackle alone. There are numerous and overlapping agencies and jurisdictions involved, and it takes a professional nurse license defense attorney to help in negotiating the process and in resolving any complaints.
A professional license defense attorney can help you face any investigations or administrative proceedings with confidence, and to recover the professional licensing that is the basis for your career.
