B.C. Woman Caught Impersonating as a Nurse: The Importance Of Conducting Thorough Professional License Checks

Healthcare professionals are highly respected in society for the selfless nature of their service. Nurses in particular tend to be on the frontlines, healing injuries, ensuring constant care, and imparting mental health support; the role of a nurse is indispensable. However, latest developments in the healthcare industry about fraudulent nurses without licenses have raised concerns about the trustworthiness of certain employers and their personnel management, hiring and retention practices.

In a recent case, a woman was found to have impersonated a nurse at a hospital in British Columbia, Canada, providing patient care to an unknown number of hospital visitors before being discovered as a fraud. Brigitte Cleroux began working at the British Columbia Women's Hospital and pretended to be a nurse for nearly a year before it was found that she lacked the necessary credentials to practice.

Negligent Hiring: Employer Verification of Occupational Licenses Is Necessary

In this entire process, it was the B.C. Women’s Hospital, which had hired Cleroux, that faced the worst of the backlash.

When a family decides to seek out care from a medical institution, it is expected that there be no question as to the legitimacy of the specialists providing patient care. Thus, in case of any inadequate or unprofessional care, which is highly probable if the nurse is not properly trained, the institution (such as the B.C. Women’s Hospital) may facilitate harm to patients, lose business, and ruin its reputation in the industry.

When hiring new employees for your business, it is critical to conduct a thorough background check to verify all professional credentials and licenses. It is recommended that you examine the following information:

• Changes in license status;
• License expiration;
• Disciplinary track record;
• Changes in critical information (e.g., name);
• Missing documentation (if any).

There are various internet websites available that give information necessary for license verification. For instance, in South Carolina, comprehensive information about employees' licensure and disciplinary performance is available through the state boards of Labor Licensing Regulation (LLR). Their 'License Lookup' and 'Online Verification' features allows employers to cross-check the desired information about a prospective or current employee's license.

Manual License Verification Drawbacks

Needless to say, the more detailed the process is to verify credentials, the better. Although the resources are available, instances of fraud continue to occur in the healthcare industry, primarily because license checks are performed manually, making them prone to error and time-consuming.

Current methods for verifying credentials are insufficient, which may explain why cases like that of Cleroux in British Columbia continue to arise, and this must be taken into consideration. Businesses suffer greatly when a professional in a regulated industry does not have a valid license, or has become disbarred or suspended, and yet continues to practice. For the sake of both client well-being as well as the business’s reputation, it is critical for employers to devise an actionable plan for avoiding any dangers that may arise from a professional relationship with such individuals.

Fully Automated Professional License Verification: How Does It Work?

Given the high number of fraudulent cases, it is absolutely essential to transition to more dependable methods of verifying the employee's official documents and conducting periodic checks on the license's validity.

This method ensures a thorough background check at the lowest possible cost and in the shortest amount of time. It is both efficient and accurate, and by utilizing cutting-edge features, it is capable of quickly and accurately verifying professional licenses on a pre-scheduled basis.

Credential Sentry's automated license verification system compares daily changes to primary data sources to the professional licenses in your database. By eliminating the need for manual verification, you'll save a great deal of time and work. As a result, it improves overall business performance while also ensuring the highest levels of safety and security by eliminating the risk of working with dishonest individuals. You can go about your business with complete confidence, knowing that you're dealing with people you can rely on.

The following features of the software make the process easier and more efficient than manual verification efforts:

• The results and updates are immediately displayed in your dashboard and emailed to you, guaranteeing that you are always up to date on your contractors' and employees' licensing status;
• The results are consistent with its primary source of information - official third-party registers - ensuring that any changes to that information are reflected in your database as well.

The Benefits of Using an Automated Tool to Verify Professional Licenses

Time and money-savings

The time required to manually verify your contractor's or employee's licensure and professional information in third-party databases is a heavy investment. Automating these checks (which, by their very nature, must be performed on a continuous basis, sometimes even daily and weekly) will save you time, which can be dedicated to other productive tasks. Automation also reduces the budget required to complete the checking procedure.

Performance

Automation of the credentialing process allows you to verify multiple records at once, which would otherwise be taxing to check one at a time manually.

Credibility

Credential Sentry's automated online verification software's accuracy establishes its credibility and dependability. The software only analyzes third-party official websites and registers that contain information on occupational licenses in specific jurisdictions.

Risk elimination and protection

Automatic verification of professional credentials provides you with the most recent information on the license status of business experts working in regulated industries. This enables you to eliminate any hidden hazards while working with the professionals and offer protection in the long run.

Growth

Comprehensive and ongoing monitoring of your vendors' and employees' licensing information ensures that your business operates safely within the industry, fostering customer trust and loyalty and enabling unprecedented growth.

Efficiency through simplicity

Because it can be used by anyone in your organization who is in charge of performing license checks, regardless of their level of technical expertise, Credential Sentry’s license verification automation tool makes the process simple, intuitive, and easy to implement in the organization. As a result, it provides the highest level of efficiency possible

Scalability

Credentialing verification procedures must be easily scalable for employers, especially those working in large organizations with a high concentration of licensed professionals such as healthcare workers. Automation streamlines the otherwise time-consuming verification process, allowing for increased performance and scalability by automatically checking any number of licenses at once on a daily basis.

Now is The Time to Safeguard Your Company

Fraudulent licenses are common in the healthcare industry, as getting such reputable jobs is difficult in real life. Many opt for quicker and more unethical ways to covet them. That unqualified and disbarred nurses are found working in a life-critical environment such as healthcare due to negligent hiring is extremely problematic.

On your end as an employer, by utilizing the correct tools to create a rigorous credential verification process, you can ensure these mishaps never happen to your institution. Professional license checking is a significant means of risk management. It should be implemented by every firm, especially in the healthcare industry, where any shortcoming of the employee might seriously influence the health of a patient. Now is the time to upgrade to the enhanced system of automated licensing checks in order to alleviate your fears and protect your company from future risk.