Ejike Asiegbunam, a Maryland man, has been accused of selling fake nursing degrees, raising concerns about the reliability of academic qualifications in healthcare. Could this be a symptom of a bigger problem in US healthcare?
Also, if this alleged fraud is taking place, does it mean that people without the necessary qualifications are hired as nurses in hospitals? Before we explore the impact of this scheme, let’s take a look at a brief background of the Maryland scheme itself.
The Maryland Scheme
The scheme involved the alleged sale of fake nursing degrees by Ejike Asiegbunam, the owner of a nursing school in Florida and a nursing exam prep school in Maryland. Asiegbunam and three others are accused of conspiring to provide purchasers with false and fraudulent RN degrees from the Florida nursing school, charging between $15,000 and $22,000 for the fake nursing school documents and up to $5,000 to complete online prerequisites.
Analysis
This does not look like an isolated incident. What I mean is that the problem of selling fake nursing degrees might not be happening just once. Instead, it could be showing us that there are bigger problems with how healthcare works.
For example, imagine if this isn’t the only case of someone selling fake degrees. This means that there’s something wrong with how schools are monitored or how degrees are checked in the U.S healthcare field. Maybe there aren’t enough rules to stop this kind of fraud from happening, or maybe the system isn’t set up to catch it easily.
Impact
This scheme could lead to patients getting the wrong medication dosage from an untrained nurse, this could have an adverse reaction or even worse the patient could have an overdose. These unqualified nurses could miss crucial symptoms or misinterpret medical signs due to inadequate knowledge on illnesses.
However, patients aren’t the only ones who would be affected by this. If these so-called nurses aren’t doing the work that they claim to know how to do, what then happens to the other nurses in the hospital that actually know what they’re doing? Just because a nurse couldn’t fulfill their obligations, the rest of the qualified nurses are left to suffer the extra workload.
In the worst-case situation, the patient could die as a result of these unqualified nurses’ mistakes. Obviously, their family members wouldn’t find that funny in any way. A lawsuit may be filed against the hospital. These lawsuits are not cheap to settle or defend. This would cost the hospital a significant amount of money, which could even harm the facility’s financial stability and reputation, all because of one man’s actions.
Conclusion
Finding out about fake nursing degrees shows there are big problems in healthcare. It means patients might not be safe and hospitals could be under a lot of pressure. The Florida Board of Nursing and Federal Agencies need better rules to make sure nurses are well-trained.
Although this is not a collective demand for change, it is an extremely important component of a country’s responsibility to its people. The general public requires standards that focus on honesty and quality in nursing education as well as assistance for those aspiring to be nurses.
