License Defense / Criminal Convictions

Pharmacists, Nurses, Dentists, Veterinarians and other health care professionals often have immediate and direct access to narcotics. Moreover, most health care professionals (especially Nurses, Dentists and Therapists), are frontline providers who have significant contact with sick, elderly and often emotionally and physically compromised patients. This contact often extends into a patient’s home and quite frequently involves their family and other personal relationships of interest to the patient. Access to financial and other personal information may be available and therefore an applicant or licensee’s criminal history and behavior is considered highly relevant to licensing Board in determining an individual’s present character and fitness.

Chapter 53 of the Texas Occupations Code and the Individual State Board Rules and Regulations are the guiding statutory authority which frames a Board’s actions, investigations and determinations regarding applicants and licensees with criminal convictions. These matters are often loaded with highly complicated legal issues that may not be fact specific. Therefore, because the consequences are high it is best for a health care license applicant or licensee to obtain legal representation to help guide and represent them through the process of explaining a criminal conviction. Often times a simple legal showing of rehabilitation can bypass what would otherwise be a long and drawn out legal battle. Furthermore, rehabilitation is best shown by an advocate and not by the applicant or licensee since it is their character that is the issue in question.

For a more specific guideline between the relationship between criminal convictions and health care licenses click here