UPDATE: There’s no clean national census of nurses and doctors using fake degrees, but we have spent two months investigating this, and the documented cases cluster into two very different magnitudes.
Nurses: roughly 7,600 fraudulent diplomas and transcripts, with about 2,274 people confirmed to have used them to sit and pass the NCLEX, then get licensed and hired. That’s a rock-solid number.
Physicians: upwards of 10,000 people in hospitals and private practice hold fraudulent foreign medical degrees.
We have identified 11 nurses and 5 physicians in five Southern California hospitals who may have counterfeit degrees from India, including a current emergency medicine trauma surgeon.