Nursing Board Background Checks found Dozens of Criminally Convicted Registered RNs

California - Newly implemented fingerprint background checks for new and currently registered nurses has uncovered dozens of registered nurses who have had past conviction some of them for serious crimes including sex offenses, murder, assault and robbery.

After numerous published stories as well as public and media concerns, the State Board of Registered Nursing has expanded it efforts to review its nurses and their criminal records. In 1990, it had become mandatory for applying nurses to submit their fingerprints for criminal background checks, this was the first instance of a nursing board in the country to requiring the these types of fingerprint criminal background checks.

Before the move, nurses that had already been licensed before 1990 were not included and exempted from providing fingerprints, but now the State Board is requiring those nurses as well as new applicants to all submit their fingerprints.

Nearly 64,000 nurses belonging to those who have been registered before 1990 have submitted their fingerprints to the board, while more than 400 licenses were temporarily put on hold because they have not complied with the new regulation and have not submitted their prints. These fingerprint background checks are the State Boards continuing efforts to overhaul its regulations and procedures following numerous reports of nurses caught having previous criminal records.

Most of the crimes and convictions that have surfaced after the fingerprint background checks were mostly minor crimes and misdemeanors such as petty theft, driving under the influence, fraud, but do include some more serious convictions. As of recent, there were two murder convictions, an attempted murder, vehicular homicide, and a manslaughter conviction.

Due to the success of the program by the State Nursing Board, efforts are being made to include all other licensed health professionals in the state, but one main problem exist for this to be achieved, the different health regulatory agencies and boards have their own regulations and set of rules regarding licensing and background check requirements. As of present, it is believed that there are 937,100 different licensed health care workers that have not been submitted to criminal background checks.