A Case against Health Care Criminals: Nurse Impostors on the Rise in Arizona
By Christina Orlovsky, senior staff writer
As the nation faces a severe nursing shortage, many facilities are searching for qualified staff to fill vacancies. But what happens when a hired nurse’s credentials are less than legitimate? In one state, a rising number of impostor nurses have facilities—and the state nursing board—on the lookout.
In Arizona, the number of people caught posing as nurses has continued to increase over the past five years, climbing from seven in 2002 to 29 in 2004, according to the Arizona State Board of Nursing. The organization’s Web site lists a total of 92 people that have either applied for a position, been employed or “represented themselves to others as a nurse or CNA without evidence of a valid license or certificate to practice in Arizona.”
According to Valerie Smith, MS, RN, associate director of complaints and investigations for the Arizona State Board of Nursing, the reason for the rise in occurrences of impostor nurses is two-fold.
One reason for the rise, Smith said, is that more people are attempting to pose as nurses because they are aware of the nursing shortage and the consequential increase in nursing salaries. The majority of impostors have some sort of health care background, she added, whether as certified nursing assistants posing as a licensed practical nurses or LPNs posing as RNs.
“One recent case was a radiology technician who somehow got hold of someone else’s license, changed the name and address and was able to secure a job as an RN in an outpatient surgical setting,” Smith explained. “She worked in that job for two years, providing numerous reasons for not bringing in her license. Her employer finally plugged her name into our site and didn’t find her. They plugged in the RN number and it came up, only with someone else’s name.”
This particular case is just one example of the second reason for the rise in impostor incidences.
“We’ve become better at identifying them,” Smith said. “Not only have they used technology to their advantage in falsifying documents, but we’re using technology to identify them.”
Smith pointed to the nursing board’s Web site as the perfect source for licensure verification.
“The significant increase of impostors caught in Arizona coincides with the time we put our licensure verification online,” she added. “An employer can now go onto our site to verify that a person is licensed at the point of hire,” instead of years down the road.
Smith also explained that it is the obligation of a state board of nursing to provide evidence that a person is a licensed health care provider. Before the advent of the Internet, she added, a list was provided to and published by the newspaper.
“Making license numbers available to the public is not new,” she said. “What’s new is that now we have the technology to allow us to be able to do that in real time.”
There are a number of other methods hiring personnel can employ to ensure their new hires are indeed who—and how well educated—they say they are.
“First, never accept a copy of a document,” Smith said. “Many times the impostors get by because they have altered documents and provided copies. Always look at a source document and then take the extra step: Verify that document online.”
Another way to stop impostors from falling through the cracks is to compare a job candidate’s application and resume and then question any inconsistencies.
“In every case we have looked at there has been a disconnect between the application and the resume,” Smith explained. “The name on the application differs from that on the license or other documents. People’s names change—through marriage, divorce or for other reasons—but their license should always be in their legal name.”
If the person is applying under a different name, Smith added, “don’t accept the story.”
Finally, if an impostor does make it past the hiring checkpoint and into the workplace, it is every staff member’s responsibility to pay attention to any demonstration of unmatched competency—the inability do something their licensure, education or experience should permit them to do.
“Anytime the thought goes through your mind, ‘I wonder if this person is really a nurse because she’s not really able to do the job,’ follow up on that,” Smith asserted.
“It is a privilege to hold a nursing license. Part of that privilege is that the public has a right to know a nurse’s background, education and experience,” she added. “I would encourage employers and the public to take advantage of that information that is public record to ensure a provider is who they say they are.”
For more information, visit the Arizona State Board of Nursing Web site.
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