Convicted of crimes and reprimanded for rough treatment of patient, nurse aide still got her license back

All the details in our Health Safety stories come from publicly available Final Orders, Consent Orders, Orders of Suspension and other documents from the Virginia Department of Health Professionals. For more information, see the Editor’s note below the story.

Most people looking to place their loved ones—or themselves—in assisted living facilities would assume that someone must be certified and receive formal training to work as a nursing aide, have a generally good history with patients and a clean criminal record. Unfortunately, they would be wrong.

Petersburg nursing aide Jasmine Wheeler received her nursing aide certificate in October 2012 and was hired to work at Petersburg’s Vista Park Memory Care Center. Only half a year later, another nursing aide witnessed Wheeler speaking to a resident in an “aggressive manner” and “popping” the resident’s hand in retaliation to the resident grabbing her arm. Wheeler denied the allegation but was fired from her job in April. An investigation into this case revealed that Wheeler had been fired from two other nursing aide jobs since she first received her certification.

Around a year later, Wheeler was jailed. She was convicted of one count of obtaining money by false pretense in Colonial Heights in April 2014, and three misdemeanor counts of obtaining money by false pretenses in Henrico in June. The nursing aide had been approaching people at automatic teller machines and asking them to deposit worthless checks into their accounts and withdraw cash for her. She was sentenced to 12 months in jail by the Colonial Heights General District Court and 12 months by the Henrico General District Court, but ultimately spent 6 months in jail—the rest on probation. She was ordered to pay restitution to her victims, which her mom paid for her.

Wheeler was officially reprimanded by the Board of Medicine in April 2015 for her rough treatment of the patient and her multiple convictions, and her certificate was suspended indefinitely. However, because nursing aides only need to be certified and complete formal training if they work somewhere that receives funds from Medicare or Medicaid, she soon found another job as a nursing aide with a private company, Public Parternships, LLC. This is where she was working when she applied for a reinstatement of her nursing certificate in 2017. It was granted that same year.

“Ms. Wheeler has demonstrated that she is safe and competent to resume nurse aid practice,” the approval letter from the board read, since she’d been working at Public Partnerships without incident. “The application… for reinstatement of her certificate to practice as a nurse aide is approved without restriction.”

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To file a formal complaint against a health professional, click here .  For links to the public information informing this story, see below.

Want to know if your doctors, other medical professionals or local pharmacies have been investigated? Check out the license lookup.

EDITOR’S NOTE: When citizens are a danger to the public safety, law enforcement arrests them and charges them with crimes; they have the opportunity to face a jury of their peers; if convicted, they serve time and/or probation that can often ensnare them in the system for years.

When a medical professional is an alleged danger to the public safety, the Virginia Department of Health Professionals handles all facets of the inquiry, including the investigation and penalties. And sometimes, even when a medical professional is found liable of doing harm to patients, they may face a reprimand, pay a fine and continue to practice, without missing a day of work and with little chance for the public to see what they’ve done.

The Health Safety stories in this series tell the facts of cases where medical professionals  endanger our public health safety. They also bring you into the world of the medical board’s consent orders and public final orders, so you can see exactly how the VDHP’s self-policing system works.

LINKS TO DOCUMENTS REFERENCED ABOVE:

Jasmine Wheeler License Number: 1401156354Nurse Aide

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Convicted of crimes and reprimanded for rough treatment of patient, nurse aide still got her license back