Advanced Nursing Practice: Court Says Nurse's Constitutional Rights Violated
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
July 1998
Quick Summary: Administrative proceedings over a person’s professional license affect a constitutional interest in liberty and require due process of law.
SUPREME COURT OF WYOMING, 1998.The nurse had advanced practitioner standing in the field of geriatric nurse practice. An adult jail inmate filed a complaint with the State Board of Nursing claiming the nurse was practicing illegally as an advanced practitioner in adult nursing with advanced practitioner standing only in geriatric nursing.
The Board sent a notice to the nurse asking her to substantiate her qualifications in adult advanced nursing practice. She sent back various materials including a letter of recommendation from the head of the University of Utah nursing program.
The nurse thought the Board was in the process of updating her qualifications and would be enlarging the scope of her license to include adult advanced practice. In fact, the Board was conducting a disciplinary investigation to see whether the nurse had practiced illegally beyond the scope of her geriatric-nursing advanced practitioner standing.
The Supreme Court of Wyoming threw out the Board’s disciplinary sanctions because the notice the Board sent to the nurse was so misleading it violated her Constitutional right to due process of law. The upshot was the Board actually gave her adult advanced-practitioner status.
Slagle v. Wyoming State Board of Nursing, 954 P. 2d 979 (Wyo., 1998).