As a nurse, you come into contact with prescription medication every day. While handling these drugs is a routine part of your job that you probably don’t think much about, it can end up landing you under intense scrutiny that could cost you your job and your license. After all, allegations of medication mishandling are serious. If you wind up on the receiving end of such allegations, then you have to know how to aggressively defend yourself; otherwise, your career could be devastated.
But what’s the best way to defend your license, your career and your future when you’ve been accused of something like prescription fraud? Let’s take a closer look so that you have a better idea of the steps you can take to position yourself for a favorable outcome when your license is on the line.
How to defend your license after allegations of prescription fraud
Although mere allegations of prescription fraud might leave you fearful of the future, you can’t be so scared of the process awaiting you that you paralyze yourself into inaction. Instead, you need to be proactive in defending yourself, which may include taking the following steps:
- Gaining an understanding of prescription fraud: Your first step should be to educate yourself on prescription fraud so that you understand the nature of the allegations you’re facing. Prescription fraud often involves illegally obtaining prescription medication, such as by writing an unwarranted medication, providing false information to secure medication or pretending to be a doctor to write a medication. Investigations into prescription fraud often arise when there’s a discrepancy in prescription drug counts, medication is removed without an appropriate record or patient medical files are altered. These are the types of accusations that you’ll be facing moving forward.
- Being careful with what you say: If you admit wrongdoing, there’s a good chance that your license is going to take a hit. So, before making any kind of statement, whether to the police or the licensing board, you should discuss the matter with your attorney to see if there’s a more appropriate way to frame the issue.
- Showing a simple mistake: If the allegations you’re facing were brought on due to an honest mistake, then you might be able to successfully argue this to protect your license, since fraud requires some sort of intentional action to deceive others.
- Securing video footage and witness accounts: Even though you’re under the microscope in your investigation, there’s a possibility that the wrong person has been accused of wrongdoing. By reviewing camera footage from your place of employment and talking to witnesses, you might find that it’s easy to show that someone else is responsible for the issue at hand.
- Highlighting poor chain of custody practices: Even though your employer and the licensing board might jump to the conclusion that you’re at fault, there’s a possibility that the issue is really attributable to bad storage and inventory practices. If that’s the case, you can shift the blame onto your employer and protect your license.
Aggressively fight to protect your nursing license
Allegations of wrongdoing can be the death knell for your nursing career. That’s why when these accusations are made, you have to be diligent in building your defense. That might seem hard to do at the moment, but your attorney can guide you through the process while ensuring that you gather the evidence needed to raise a compelling defense. If you’d like to learn more about your legal options and how to protect your interests as fully as possible in these matters, please continue to read our blog.
