If you have been reported and have received a letter from the Texas Board of Nursing regarding a case or complaint filed against you, seeking and hiring a nurse attorney is the solution for that. This should be the first thing to do for an RN or an LVN before facing the case they are in.
At the time of the initial incident, an RN was employed as a Registered Nurse at a hospital in Dallas, Texas, and had been in that position for one (1) year and six (6) months.
It was on or about May 9, 2019, through December 2, 2019, the RN misrepresented herself as a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and exceeded her scope of practice as a Family Nurse Practitioner by treating psychiatric patients, though she was not licensed as a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. The RN’s conduct may have exposed the patients unnecessarily to a risk of harm from improper interventions by the RN, whose training may have been inadequate to provide independent advanced medical care for psychiatric care.
And then on or about May 14, 2019, and May 31, 2019, the RN wrote a prescription for Lexapro and Diazepam for a Patient and a prescription for Suboxone for another Patient on prescription forms that did not contain the name, address, telephone number, and United States Drug Enforcement Administration number of the physician with whom she had a prescriptive authority agreement or facility-based protocol or other written authorization.
In response, the RN states she is certified as a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. She also states that the American Nurses Credentialing Center granted her the certification of Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner on March 15, 2019, and it is effective until March 14, 2024. The RN believes the ANCC provided a verification letter dated April 2, 2019, to the Texas Board of Nurse Examiners, verifying the RN’s certification of being a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. The RN believed this was sufficient to verify her credentials and was not aware her credentials and certification as a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner were not duly registered with the State of Texas and, therefore, was unaware she was not authorized to practice as a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. The RN states she has undertaken steps to register her certifications and all required documents have been submitted to the Texas Board of Nursing for review and approval so that her Nursing Board profile may be updated to accurately reflect all her certifications.
Because of the RN’s unprofessional conduct which can constitute grounds for discipline and denial of a license under Section 301.452(b)(10)&(13) of the Texas Occupations Code. The further sanction may apply if the RN is found to have more violations.
This could have been on a different result if the RN could have hired a nurse attorney for her defense but has failed to do so.
If you have questions about the Texas Board of Nursing disciplinary process, you can contact the Law Office of Nurse Attorney Yong J. An for a confidential consultation by calling or texting 24/7 at (832) 428-5679 and ask for attorney Yong.