CA Nursing Board seeks better licensing standards

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An update from last story: SignOnSanDiego.com > News > State -- CA nursing board seeks better licensing standards

LOS ANGELES – The state nursing board will ask all nurses renewing their licenses whether they have been convicted of any crimes after a newspaper reported that dozens of nurses had kept their licenses for years despite multiple convictions.

A joint investigation by the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization found that some nurses – about 115 – were only flagged by the state agency after they racked up three or more criminal convictions. Twenty-four nurses had at least five, according to the newspaper.

Any new regulations would have to be approved by the state's Office of Administrative Law, said Carrie Lopez, director of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees more than 30 professional licensing agencies.


The Board of Registered Nursing must also develop emergency regulations to obtain fingerprints from all nurses licensed before 1990. Lopez anticipated all nurses who have not been fingerprinted will have to do so when renewing after March 1.

“We are taking swift action to provide additional consumer protections through all of our boards, including the Board of Registered Nursing,” she said in a statement earlier this week.

At least one nurse is currently in prison; another was able to renew his license from there for years after being convicted of attempted murder.
The California Nurses Association, the union representing about 65,000 nurses in the state, said this week that it supports criminal checks for all nurses.

“We have always supported background checks on healthcare workers,” said Jill Furillo, the union's Southern California director. “There should be uniform standards. It sounds to me like there have not been,” she said. California licenses 343,000 active registered nurses, the largest number in the nation.

Discuss this story here: http://www.ultimatenurse.com/forum/f...st-here-33783/

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Even more: FresnoBee.com: California: Vocational nursing board failed to censure nurses


California's vocational nursing board lagged in taking action or did not take action at all against licensed vocational nurses convicted of crimes, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday on its website.

The review of the California Bureau of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians by the Times and ProPublica, an investigative news organization, follows similar findings by the Times last month at the bureau's sister agency, the Board of Registered Nursing.

The investigation of the vocational nursing bureau found 27 nurses racked up three or more criminal convictions before regulators filed complaints against them.

The previous Times investigation found that the RN board allowed dozens of registered nurses convicted of serious or repeated crimes to retain their licenses for years.
After the Times revealed its findings, the registered nursing board last month approved regulations requiring all nurses to submit fingerprints to check for criminal convictions.

Notice it says 'convicted of serious or repeated crimes'; also 3 or more criminal convictions.