How to Protect Your Facility Against Fake Nurses

Your healthcare organization invests in people as part of its commitment to providing high-quality care. From the surgeons performing life-saving operations to the therapists who follow through with recovery, it’s the people who make all the difference. Your standards of care become compromised when fake nurses enter the building.

A scheme to produce bogus nursing degrees was discovered in January 2023 — and many ill-prepared nurses made their way into the healthcare workforce. Here’s how you can protect your facility from hiring nurses involved in these schemes.

What Are Fake Nurses?

A federal investigation known as Operation Nightingale identified three nursing schools in Florida that allegedly sold fake nursing degrees and transcripts to nursing students. Between the three programs, over 7,600 fake diplomas were issued.

This allowed them to sit for the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX), and 37% of diploma recipients obtained RN, LPN, or LVN licenses. Nurses gained employment in at least the following nine states using fake diplomas:

• Delaware
• Florida
• Georgia
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• New Jersey
• New York
• Ohio
• Texas

In the ongoing investigation, 25 defendants were charged with running the scheme, and the names of the nurses involved were released. State nursing boards started investigations and began taking action against the nurses identified. However, it’s unclear how many nurses slipped through the cracks — or whether additional similar schemes could emerge.

Ways to Avoid Hiring Fake Nurses

Nurses involved in education schemes don’t have the educational coursework and clinical hours required to sit for nursing boards. Employing nurses with bogus credentials hurts a healthcare organization’s credibility and presents a public safety risk.

As a healthcare employer, you can take extra steps to prevent hiring fraudulent nurses — and identify those who potentially may be working in your facility already. There are measures you can take at each phase of the hiring process to protect your facility from unqualified nurses.

Screening Applications

The National Council for State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) brings together regulating bodies to establish nursing standards, including nursing licensure. In its official statement, NCSBN announced a collaboration with state and federal agencies to identify individuals and institutions that were involved in the issuance of fake degrees.

As a result of that collaboration states have been able to provide additional information and resources to employers to help screen for applicants with questionable credentials. For example, the Texas Board of Nursing (BON) website lists the names of nurses with fake degrees as well as educational institutions that have been associated with the issuance of fraudulent degrees. Similarly, the BON website in Maryland also lists the names of nurses with public orders against them relating to the issuance of fake degrees.

It’s critical to verify nursing licenses at the earliest opportunity and to have a process for doing so on an ongoing basis, even after applicants are hired. To quickly look up and verify licensure statuses, just click on the link to your state’s BON nursing license lookup website below.