Disclaimer: If you have personally been affected by this, please seek a lawyer. I am not a licensed legal professional. This page is not legal or medical advice.
We’ve all seen the news or at least heard about it. Operation Nightengale. A massive investigation into an alleged scheme of over 7000 fraudulent nursing degrees.
This is serious. Beyond the financial and legal consequences, the sale of fraudulent nursing degrees is a serious issue that has major impacts on the nursing profession and the healthcare industry as a whole. In this post, we’ll take a closer look into the effects of imposter nurses and fraudulent nursing degrees on the nursing profession and the healthcare industry
Let’s jump right in.
How this affects the nursing profession:
Decreased credibility and respect
As much as we don’t want to admit this, the sale of fraudulent nursing degrees will damage the credibility of the nursing profession as a whole. Remember the “you’re just a nurse” culture before we were renowned as healthcare heroes? Don’t be surprised if this fraudulent scheme takes us back a few steps. A mistake like this breaches the integrity of the nursing profession which can result in mistreatment and decreased respect for all nurses, unfortunately, even those of us who have sacrificed so much to earn our degrees legally.
Increased scrutiny
Remember all of the competencies that we have to complete every year? Well, thanks to the fraudulent nursing degrees, those of us who have legally earned our degrees will have to deal with even more scrutiny as a result. This means more pre-employment and yearly competency testing which can lead to increased stress and anxiety for many nurses, even though we actually worked hard and earned our degrees rather than buying them.
Decreased morale
As they investigate and expose these fraudulent nurses, it will reveal that we’ve been playing on an uneven playing field possibly filled with corruption and nepotism. This will be devastating for those of us who lost time, relationships, and hours of sleep to legally earn our degrees. This can also cause resentment among nurses leading to decreased morale within the nursing community.
Imposter nurses and fraudulent nursing degrees also have a major impact on the healthcare industry and patient care. Here’s how:
Reduced quality of care
Imagine having a nurse who has not gone through the hours of education, competency testing, and training, caring for you or your loved one. Regardless of the length of time, they’ve been illegally practicing as a nurse, they lack the education, skills, and knowledge needed to provide safe and effective patient care. As a whole, this further decreases access to the quality care that patients need.
Increased risk of medical errors
Medical errors can have serious and sometimes life-threatening consequences for patients. Nurses play a vital role in reducing medical errors and keeping patients safe and healthy. For example, someone with a fraudulent degree may not know the signs of sepsis and not initiate getting the right treatment quickly enough. Or they might not know to draw blood cultures before administering an antibiotic. And most importantly, in a medical emergency, a fraudulent nursing degree holder may not know simple interventions to stabilize a patient, which is dangerous.
Damage to the healthcare system
The sale of fraudulent degrees causes even more damage to the reputation of the entire healthcare system. The healthcare industry is already riddled with significant disparities in access and quality of care, especially for marginalized, black, and brown communities. Impersonating nurses makes this problem worse, leading to even more mistrust in the healthcare system and the perpetuation of disparities in access to quality care.
Here’s the bottom line.
Fraudulent nursing degrees are a huge problem that affects nurses, patients, and everyone involved in healthcare. It’s my hope to raise awareness of the severity of this issue and how important it is to protect the integrity of the healthcare industry and the nursing profession.
By understanding this, we can all do our part in holding the right people accountable and preventing this disgusting event from ever happening again. Nurses are a critical part of our healthcare industry, and it’s important that we protect our profession’s reputation.
