California Nurses Working Here While Sanctioned Elsewhere

In but one more case of things falling through the cracks, it has been discovered by the California Board of Registered Nursing  that some 3,500 of its nurses have been punished for misconduct by other states — hundreds even had their licenses revoked — while maintaining clean licenses in California.  So essentially what these means for sanctioned nurses, if you have trouble finding a job in other states,then come to California.   thirty-Five hundred nurses that have been disciplined in other states is no small number.

As the joint report from the Los Angeles Times and Pro Publica indicated, certain healthcare staffing agencies often conduct shoddy background checks, or they do not run background checks at all.  When the staffing agencies or responsible recruiting partners do actually run the background checks, then the responsible personnel does not thoroughly review the returned background searches.   In some cases,  databases and information provided by the sanctioning bodies has not been updated, and healthcare  workers who really shouldn’t be employed go on to find jobs.  In California.  And presumably elsewhere.   One has to believe that healthcare workers sanctioned in other states may find work in fresh states, meaning states where they haven’t worked previously.  An odd concept that nurses and healthcare workers say one step ahead of the disciplinary actions, but that is often how it works.

I have blogged about this issues a number of times.   One such article is entitled, Suspect Caregivers Missed on Healthcare Sanctions Background Checks.   According to the new article in the Los Angeles Times, the California Board of Registered Nursing has discovered these 3,500 odd nurses with prior disciplinary activity.   This activity can range from past criminal records to drug abuse issues or being on the sex offenders registry.     Past infractions can also refer to the nurses and healthcare workers abusing or robbing the elderly or abusing the young.   There are also the issues of professional neglect and general misconduct while on the job.

According to the Times article,California reviewed its list of 376,000 active and inactive nurses against a database maintained by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing.  This list consists of disciplinary actions take by the different states.   All states report their disciplinary actions on a voluntary basis.   Some nurses matched up and had beendisciplined by multiple states, sometimes for the same incident.

According to the Times article,m California’s nursing board never bothered  checking to see if its nurses had been disciplined in other states. Until late 2008, the state did not require nurses, when renewing their licenses, to even make this disclosure. . The board checked their records against the national council’s database of disciplinary actions only when the nurses first applied for a California license. Board President Ann Boynton said the board now plans to pay the national council to run  background checks of California nurses on a quarterly basis.

You would think there would be a better background checking system for healthcare personnel.   These are people entrusted with caring for our ill, our frail, our young, and our elderly.  You cannot have them abusing drugs and alcohol or perceiving their patients as easy prey to rob and abuse.   such behavior not only speaks ill of the healthcare industry in general, but of our society as a whole.

Background checks need to be conducted on a periodic basis.  These background checks need to be thoroughly reviewed before healthcare workers can start at their new job.  Otherwise, we are flirting with potential disaster.