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STUDENT NURSE APPLICANTS APPLYING FOR A LICENSE WITH A CRIMINAL RECORD: You cannot be denied your RN license based solely on a conviction.

Criminally convicted student RNs, celebrate! That felony or misdemeanor criminal conviction that you’ve been freaking out about will not automatically result in the denial of your RN license! There is a colossal caveat though; you must have the conviction properly expunged and you must still provide evidence of rehabilitation or mitigating evidence to convince the BRN that you will not pose a public risk because of your prior conviction. Actually… come to think of it… this is not really huge news. Actually, this is really similar to what was occurring forEVER, with student RNs applying for a license BEFORE the January 2015 amendment to Business and Professions Code, § 480.

Prior to the amendment, student nurse applicants with misdemeanor or felony convictions were required to disclose that conviction to the BRN. You still have to do that. A student RN was required to provide court documents and supporting documentation. You still have to do that. The student nurse was required to explain the circumstances of the arrest and conviction. Same now. So what the heck did the amendment do exactly?!?!?! Well, it says the BRN can’t deny the license SOLELY on the grounds that the nurse was convicted of a misdemeanor or felony if that crime has been expunged.

Here is the reality of HOW this amended law works:

  1. You still must disclose an expunged conviction to the BRN
  2. You still must supply all the requisite supporting documentation
  3. You still have to give the BRN an explanation of the event (DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!— if I could sound a tiny siren from this page right now I would—- this is where most applicants botch their own applications by saying too much or not enough)
  4. You still have to provide the BRN with mitigating evidence
  5. The only difference is now if you show the BRN that the conviction was expunged, the BRN cannot deny just because of the conviction. They can however deny you for what would be considered a violation of the Nurse Practice Act or failure to provide sufficient evidence of rehabilitation.

The bottom line is you cannot simply show the Board of Nursing that the misdemeanor or felony conviction has been expunged and then hold your hand out for your shiny new license. You still have to convince them that you are worthy of being granted an RN license and pray that they give you one without the restrictions of probation. This isn’t any different than what student RNs have been doing long prior to the amended law. How can you do this? Get help from people who do it all the time….people who have been doing it for ever….. People like us, for example.

At this point, you’ve worked your tail off as a student nurse and somewhere in the midst of it you had a massive panic attack because you found out that your criminal record could ruin it all. Don’t panic. We can help you. We’ve helped thousands of student nurse applicants get and keep their RN licenses and we can help you, too. Our criminal defense attorneys can assist you with PROPERLY expunging the conviction and the our RN Licensing attorneys can assist you with applying for and getting your RN license. Give me a call and I will happily explain the process.