CRNA Academic Misconduct | Lento Law Firm

The Challenge of CRNA Academic Misconduct Charges

You undoubtedly face a formidable personal and professional challenge if your CRNA program has accused you of academic misconduct. CRNA programs properly challenge students, but you certainly did not expect any such CRNA program misconduct issues. Just to get where you are, you have already invested a tremendous amount in your nursing education and career. Yet make no mistake: CRNA academic misconduct charges can place not only your CRNA program but also your nursing license, job, and career at risk. If your CRNA program were to dismiss you over academic misconduct, you may have to report that dismissal to nursing license disciplinary officials who, depending on the misconduct's nature and your response, could suspend or revoke your license. And CRNA program discipline and dismissal could result in a cascade of other unfortunate collateral consequences.

Learn more here about CRNA academic misconduct issues. And retain national academic attorney Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team if you face academic misconduct or other disciplinary charges threatening your status or enrollment in your CRNA program. Call 888-535-3686 or go online now for the Lento Law Firm Student Defense Team's skilled and experienced representation.

CRNA Program Academic Standards Are Higher

Don't underestimate the high academic standards to which your CRNA program will hold you. Depending on your nursing school and choice of programs, your CRNA studies are at the master's degree or doctoral degree level. You are presumably already a degreed, licensed, and practicing nurse at the registered nurse (RN) level. You now plan to enter advanced nurse anesthesia practice, likely in the critical care unit of a hospital or in a surgical unit at a clinic, private practice, or similar healthcare setting. Patients' lives are in your hands as a practicing CRNA. CRNA programs must ensure the character and fitness of their students and graduates for clinical nurse anesthesia practice. That commitment means holding CRNA students to the highest academic standards. What passed for acceptable in your undergraduate program may no longer suffice in your advanced CRNA program. Seemingly small forms of academic misconduct can grow into much larger professional problems.

Who Defines CRNA Academic Misconduct

Your CRNA program's accrediting body, likely the federally recognized Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE), may play a role in ensuring that your CRNA program maintains and enforces an academic integrity and misconduct policy. After all, accrediting bodies must ensure the rigor and accountability of academic programs they accredit, monitor, and discipline. And academic integrity is at the core of program accountability. But the CCNE does not specifically define academic misconduct for CRNA programs. Instead, your CRNA program likely defines academic misconduct in its own policies or adopts by reference the policies of its host university. The following section gives two leading examples of CRNA programs defining academic misconduct according to the customs of the CRNA field and the norms of their host universities.

CRNA Academic Misconduct Policies

CRNA programs routinely promulgate academic misconduct policies or adopt their host university's academic misconduct policies that punish cheating, plagiarism, research fraud, and other forms of academic dishonesty. Duke University School of Nursing's leading Doctor of Nursing Practice program for CRNA students and other advanced nursing practice students is a prime example. Duke University's DNP Program Student Handbook includes elaborate provisions prohibiting academic lying, cheating, plagiarism, research fraud, and other misconduct. The University of Kansas's Nurse Anesthesia Education Student Handbook contains similar express prohibitions against those and other forms of academic misconduct. Duke's DNP Program Student Handbook defines the prohibited academic misconduct as follows:

lying, defined as communicating untruths or misrepresentations to gain an unfair academic or employment advantage;
cheating by wrongfully using or attempting to use unauthorized materials, information, study aids, or the ideas or work of another in order to gain an unfair advantage;
cheating by giving unauthorized aid to another student or receiving unauthorized aid from another person on tests, quizzes, assignments or examinations;
cheating by using or consulting unauthorized materials or using unauthorized equipment or devices on tests, quizzes, assignments or examinations;
cheating by altering or falsifying any information on tests, quizzes, assignments or examinations;
cheating by using any material portion of a paper or project to fulfill the requirements of more than one course unless the student has received prior faculty permission to do so;
cheating by working on any examination, test, quiz or assignment outside of the time constraints imposed;
cheating by submitting an altered examination or assignment to an instructor for regrading;
cheating by failing to adhere to an instructor's specific directions with respect to the terms of academic integrity or academic honesty;
plagiarism as the intent to deceive by deliberately or recklessly disregarding proper scholarly procedures when presenting any information, ideas or phrasing of another as if they were the student's own or not giving appropriate credit; or
stealing, defined as the act of intentionally taking or appropriating the property of another, including academic work, without consent or permission and with the intent to keep or use the property without the permission of the owner or the rightful possessor.

Avoiding CRNA Academic Misconduct

CRNA students can find good ways to avoid academic misconduct charges. Duke University's DNP Program Student Handbook, for instance, not just recommends but requires that CRNA and other DNP students follow these practices to avoid, report, and discourage academic misconduct:

follow the specific directions of course instructors with respect to academic integrity and academic honesty;
learn and comply with correct procedures for citation and documentation of references and assignment of credit in all written submissions;
submit only your own work for course credit, and not the work of any other;
complete all academic work independently unless the faculty member or other responsible authority has expressly authorized collaboration;
ask instructors for clarification if there is any question concerning the degree of collaboration permissible on an assignment;
give full credit to all collaborators on projects and reports in which the instructor permits collaboration;
do not use a significant portion of any other work to fulfill the requirements of more than one course, without express prior instructor approval;
strictly observe all time constraints on tests, quizzes, examinations, and assignments;
take exams when scheduled unless appropriately excused;
do not consult unauthorized materials, equipment, or devices when taking tests, quizzes, examinations, or other evaluative procedures;
refuse student requests for unauthorized aid on tests, quizzes, examinations, or assignments;
refuse to take examinations or to complete assignments for any other person;
respect the intellectual property and educational and research materials of others;
respect the intellectual property of course instructors and creators of course content by complying with principles of fair use and copyright law while avoiding unauthorized appropriation, reproduction, or dissemination;
use only your own access codes, passwords, login codes, keys, and facility access cards;
never attempt to access academic or administrative files, research documents, or patient medical records without authorization;
never alter, falsify, or fabricate academic, research, clinical, or patient documents;
be truthful in all applications for admission to academic programs, employment, and financial support for education or research;
honestly represent your own academic, clinical, and work credentials under all circumstances;
refrain from all other behaviors that clearly compromise intellectual integrity and honesty; and
promptly report any suspected violations of academic integrity to the appropriate school authorities.

Immediate Consequences to CRNA Academic Misconduct

CRNA students found to have committed academic misconduct can face immediate nursing school discipline bringing hard consequences. The University of Kansas's Nurse Anesthesia Education Student Handbook, for example, provides for warning, probation, and suspension as immediate interim consequences, potentially leading up to CRNA program dismissal. Your CRNA program course instructor or CRNA program disciplinary officials may alternatively lower your earned grade for academic misconduct, impose a failing grade in a course, require that you repeat assignments already completed or repeat a completed course, and require that you perform extra assignments or complete school or community service. Any of these disciplinary actions may delay your academic progress, requiring you to remain in school for additional terms at considerable expense in tuition and forgone CRNA earnings. You may also lose class standing, school honors, scholarships and grants, and professor references and recommendations. When facing academic misconduct charges, don't underestimate the immediate and other short-term consequences of academic misconduct findings. Retain a skilled and experienced student defense attorney advisor.

Larger Consequences to CRNA Academic Misconduct

The consequences under Duke's DNP academic misconduct policy and other similar policies run right up to program dismissal. Program dismissal can mean loss of university housing, medical insurance, transportation, recreational facilities, daycare facilities, and other benefits and amenities. You may face accelerated student loans, loss of mentor support, and other financial, social, and professional losses. Not only that but if you suffer academic misconduct dismissal from your current CRNA program, other CRNA programs will surely reject your transfer application and very likely reject your application for new admission. Lincoln Memorial University's CRNA program, for instance, expressly warns that "students dismissed from a nurse anesthesia or other advanced practice nursing program for academic, clinical or behavioral reasons will not be admitted to LMU's MSN Nurse Anesthesia Concentration."

Longer-Term Consequences of CRNA Academic Misconduct

The above discussion only begins to suggest why you need to take CRNA academic misconduct charges as seriously as your CRNA program may take them. CRNA program officials, like state nursing license officials, take academic fraud and other forms of nursing-related academic dishonesty seriously because of the risk such dishonesty presents to patients and the public. Maybe you don't immediately see it. But state Nursing Practice Acts like the one in North Carolina routinely include credentials fraud as a disqualifying ground for licensure. Indeed, the FBI's nationwide Operation Nightingale investigation identified thousands of nurses who allegedly falsified their nursing school credentials. Many of those nurses have now lost their licenses specifically because of the risk their lack of proven qualifications may present to patients and the public. Educational credentials like passing course grades certify your knowledge and skill in the course subject. If you cheat to pass, you have not demonstrated that you have the requisite skill and knowledge. And that absence of certified performance means you may present a risk to patients and the public.

CRNA Student Questions About Academic Misconduct

You very likely had many questions when you received your CRNA program's notice of academic misconduct charges. Indeed, you should have had questions if you intended to treat the charges with the seriousness they deserve, given the above potential consequences. The worst thing to do when facing CRNA academic misconduct charges is to ignore the charges. This discussion should answer most or all of a CRNA student's common questions when accused of academic misconduct. You should at least learn:

what constitutes CRNA academic misconduct;
who defines CRNA academic misconduct;
what school official has accused you of CRNA academic misconduct;
what authority that school official has to discipline you;
why CRNA programs take academic misconduct so seriously;
how you should respond to CRNA academic misconduct charges;
what should happen if you didn't do anything wrong;
what may happen if you did do something wrong;
how the school will likely proceed with its charges;
who oversees the disciplinary process;
whether your CRNA program will kick you out;
whether your CRNA academic misconduct charges will remain on your academic record; and
how your CRNA academic misconduct charges may affect your job prospects after graduation.

Why Answers to CRNA Student Questions Are Important

You should be learning all about your CRNA academic misconduct charges, including getting clear answers to the above questions, because your knowledge, along with your retained attorney advisor's counsel, will help you make wise and strategic decisions. Don't underestimate your role in the outcome of your CRNA program disciplinary proceeding. The more you participate, especially in supporting your retained attorney advisor, the better your outcome is likely to be. And the opposite is also true: the less informed you are about your CRNA academic misconduct charges, the worse your outcome is likely to be, especially if you do not retain skilled and experienced student defense counsel or you fail to listen to that counsel.

Skilled and Experienced Attorney Advisor Counsel

Do not retain and consult an unqualified local criminal defense lawyer or civil litigation attorney for your CRNA academic misconduct charges. Your CRNA disciplinary charges involve an academic administrative disciplinary proceeding, not a criminal or civil court proceeding. The rules, procedures, interests, and outcomes are all different in your academic administrative proceeding than in criminal or civil court proceedings. When you retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team, you gain the skills, experience, and strategic insights you need for your best outcome to CRNA academic misconduct charges. Ask your highly qualified student defense attorney advisor your questions, and you'll get straight, clear, and helpful answers.

Responding to CRNA Program Academic Misconduct Charges

As in many things in life and the professions, your first step in responding to CRNA program academic misconduct charges may be your most important step. Yes, you want and need to learn about CRNA program academic misconduct and disciplinary procedures. And yes, you want to think and act affirmatively, wisely, strategically, and effectively. But the first and best thing you can do is to retain a highly qualified student defense attorney advisor. No matter what you do or what your background, experience, and skills are, self-representation in an academic administrative proceeding is generally unwise. You probably lack the knowledge, skills, and experience to be effective in your self-defense, and you surely lack objectivity, given that you are the one facing the charges. Promptly retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team, and you will have taken your first and best step.

Answering CRNA Program Academic Misconduct Charges

CRNA program disciplinary charges generally require your prompt, timely, truthful, and complete written answer to the charges. Duke University's DNP Program for CRNA students, for instance, articulates the program's dispute resolution procedures in its Student Handbook, for student policy violations. That procedure requires that the CRNA student affirmatively invoke the protective hearing procedures with a timely writing provided to the disciplinary officials. If, instead, you ignore your CRNA program's academic misconduct charges, you will almost surely suffer default sanctions, meaning that you've lost your ordinary opportunity to contest the charges or seek to mitigate the sanction. Retain a highly qualified license defense attorney advisor to help you timely and accurately answer your CRNA program academic misconduct charges, invoking all available protective procedures and raising all available affirmative defenses.

If You Did Not Commit CRNA Program Academic Misconduct

You may well not have committed the CRNA program academic misconduct with which program disciplinary officials have charged you. Those officials or your complaining instructor may have misidentified you. You may have followed your instructor's instructions, which your instructor later disregarded or overlooked. Or you may have arguably committed misconduct but under extenuating or mitigating circumstances. If you have a factual defense, exonerating evidence, or mitigating circumstances, then you especially need to retain highly qualified student defense counsel to prove those grounds for dismissing the charges. A charge is only an allegation, not a determination of wrongdoing. Follow the process with your retained attorney advisor's help. Invoke and trust the process rather than assume the good graces of disciplinary officials.

What Your CRNA Program May Do

As the above discussion reflects, your CRNA program will likely have adopted its own academic misconduct policy and disciplinary procedures or have adopted by reference its host university's policy and procedure. Your CRNA program's academic misconduct policies and procedures may be very like those policies and procedures in other CRNA programs or in other programs at other colleges and universities. To a degree, academic misconduct is academic misconduct, no matter the program or university. And the same is true of fair disciplinary procedures: they have similar features no matter the program or school. Yet you and your retained attorney advisor will undoubtedly learn, invoke, and follow your own CRNA program's specific policy and procedure. Small policy and procedure differences, like the number of days you have within which to answer the charges, can make big differences in outcomes. Here, though, is a general guide to CRNA program disciplinary procedures based on those found at leading programs like Duke University School of Nursing's DNP Program and the University of Kansas's Nurse Anesthesia Education Program:

your CRNA program instructor may attempt to resolve with you conduct that your instructor believes to constitute a violation of the school's academic integrity policy, including by lowering your grade, giving you a failing grade, requiring you to repeat exams or assignments, or other measures short of school suspension or dismissal;
if your instructor does not resolve the matter in a manner that accept, the instructor or any other preceptor, school official, student, or other person may complain of your CRNA program academic misconduct, preferably in writing, to the program director, dean, or designated disciplinary official;
your CRNA program's designated disciplinary official will likely make a preliminary review of the complaint to determine whether it alleges academic misconduct;
that official may dismiss non-meritorious, frivolous, or trivial complaints while referring for investigation complaints alleging academic misconduct;
the assigned investigator may interview you, the complaining witness, instructors, students, or other witnesses, while gathering documentary and electronic evidence;
the assigned investigator will generally produce an investigation report, which you may have the opportunity to review, comment on, and attempt to supplement and correct before the report goes to the program's academic misconduct hearing officer or committee;
the hearing officer or committee may call you and the complaining witness or school disciplinary official to a hearing at which each side presents its witnesses and documentary evidence;
the hearing officer or committee writes findings and makes recommendations of any discipline, which the program director or dean accepts, rejects, or modifies; and
you may have a right of appeal to a higher program or university official.

Who Accuses CRNA Students of Academic Misconduct

You may know who complained that you committed CRNA program academic misconduct, or you may not. Some program procedures permit anonymous complaints. Disciplinary officials may safeguard the identity of a complaining witness when they believe that the accused student may retaliate. In the case of academic misconduct charges, the complaining witness is often the instructor who assigned the allegedly dishonest paper or other coursework or gave the quiz or exam on which cheating allegedly occurred. In other cases, program staff members who proctor exams, collect work, enter grades, or otherwise administer academic work may detect cheating and report it. In other cases, fellow students in the course or student roommates, tutors, or study partners may be the complaining witnesses, especially when the CRNA program requires students to report one another for academic misconduct on penalty of misconduct charges. In other cases, clinical supervisors or preceptors may detect forged or fraudulent time or other clinical records and report it as academic misconduct. Academic misconduct charges can come from any source, but those are the usual sources.

Who Oversees the CRNA Program Disciplinary Process

CRNA programs designate different officials to administer their disciplinary procedures, depending on the program's staffing, structure, and relationship to a host university. Some CRNA programs, like the leading and well-resourced ones cited above at Duke University's School of Nursing and the University of Kansas, have sufficient staffing to designate their own disciplinary director to guide the proceedings. That disciplinary official is commonly an assistant dean of students, a director of student affairs, or perhaps in the case of academic misconduct charges, an academic assistant or associate dean or director. In smaller CRNA programs, more dependent on university resources and staffing, the disciplinary director may be from the university's central academic affairs or student affairs office. In all cases, though, those officials first take the school's interest before taking the accused student's interest. Beware of soliciting or taking advice from those conflicted school officials. Their advice may lead straight to your admitting to misconduct you did not commit, simply for those school officials not to have to invest limited resources in administrative disciplinary procedures. Instead, retain your own independent and highly qualified attorney advisor.

Alternatives to CRNA Program Suspension or Expulsion

Your retained attorney advisor's biggest value to you in defending CRNA program charges may be in discerning, proposing, and negotiating a win-win alternative to disciplinary suspension or expulsion. That value may be especially true if you believe that you indeed committed academic misconduct but under extenuating or mitigating circumstances or in only a minor manner. CRNA program directors cannot generally just look askance at actual academic misconduct. To do so could undermine the integrity of their program and their relationship with instructors, staff, and other students. That's one purpose of discipline, to prove to others that the program will act accountable. Another purpose is to discourage cheating by others. But those objectives do not mean that disciplinary officials must suspend a student against whom there exists substantial evidence of cheating. Your retained attorney advisor may counsel you to accept a caution, warning, oral reprimand, or remedial instruction, especially around citation form, in response to plagiarism charges, additional academic work, school service, or community service or to make an apology or other appropriate act of contrition. You may even find it best to seek reassignment to another professor, clinical site or supervisor, or course schedule, or even transfer to another CRNA program.

Academic Misconduct Stay on a CRNA Student's Record

You and your retained attorney may indeed be able to negotiate one of the above alternatives to CRNA program suspension or expulsion. But in doing so, you should be cautious of leaving a permanent finding of academic misconduct on your program transcript or other academic or school record. Any recorded discipline can affect your future qualification for a certification exam, qualification for certification or licensure, job prospects, professional offices, and other career opportunities. You and your retained counsel may thus seek instead to negotiate or win at hearing only non-record outcomes or the right to have the program expunge discipline from your record after you satisfy terms or conditions or after an appropriate waiting period without further discipline.

Extenuating Circumstances for CRNA Academic Misconduct

CRNA program instructors, clinical supervisors, staff, administrators, and disciplinary officials all know that CRNA students face intense academic, personal, and professional demands. They also know that pressure affects students in different ways, including causing some students, especially those with a very high commitment to performance, to cut academic corners rather than fail to meet all academic deadlines. Some demands are necessary as part of a rigorous CRNA program. Disciplinary officials won't generally excuse academic misconduct because of those usual and necessary demands. Doing so would undermine the program. But disciplinary officials may, with the right advocacy from your highly qualified attorney advisor, countenance some grace for certain forms of academic misconduct when the accused student has suffered under special extenuating circumstances. The kinds of circumstances that you and your retained attorney advisor may be able to truthfully put forth to mitigate any academic discipline could potentially include:

your sudden, unexpected, serious illness and disability;
an undiagnosed learning or other educational disability;
the program's failure to reasonably accommodate your acknowledged disability;
the death of a close family member;
the serious illness of a dependent family member;
changes in your marital relationship or parental duties;
your pregnancy or the birth of a child for whom you must care;
your loss of housing, transportation, or finances; and
increased work demands or an increased travel schedule for work.

Retain a Premier National Academic Attorney Advisor

Your best move if you face CRNA academic misconduct charges threatening your discipline or dismissal is to retain national academic attorney Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team. The Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team has helped hundreds of college, university, and professional program students nationwide avoid dismissal or discipline in the face of academic misconduct charges and other disciplinary charges. Call 888-535-3686 or go online now.

Effectively Addressing CRNA Academic Misconduct Charges