Florida has now moved to sanction a nurse licensed here but banned nearly three years ago from working in Missouri because she made mistakes that ended in a patient’s death, an effort officials here jumpstarted hours after the Orlando Sentinel reported the Sunshine State was slow to address a nationwide scandal centering on Florida-educated nurses.
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The Florida Department of Health said it started investigating Tahira Bastien in 2023 and filed a complaint against her in 2024, recommending sanctions as severe as permanently revoking her license.
The complaint against Bastien cited the cease-and-desist letter issued to her in Missouri and urged the Florida Board of Nursing, which issued her license, to take action. About a year later, Bastien told the health department she wanted to fight the allegations and asked for a hearing before an administrative judge.
But the case stalled until 4:08 p.m. on May 8, when the health department referred it to the Division of Administrative Hearings, as Bastien had requested. The action came after the Orlando Sentinel published a story online at 6 a.m. that same day, citing Bastien among a number of examples of still-licensed nurses with degrees from now disgraced and shuttered Florida schools the FBI said sold diplomas.
While awaiting the hearing, Bastien remains eligible to work in Florida.
Florida’s nursing board, which issued Bastien the multi-state license allowing her to practice in Missouri, has known for years about the incident in the large St. Louis hospital in 2023. A search of Bastien’s name in Florida’s healthcare licensing database leads to the state’s 2024 complaint, and that references the Missouri cease-and-desist letter, which bans her from working as a nurse there. Florida often files such complaints when another state sanctions a nurse licensed here.
Bastien also has a degree from a South Florida nursing school implicated in a nursing diploma-selling scheme the FBI uncovered in its highly-touted “Operation Nightingale.”
Brian Wright, a spokesman for the health department, denied the state was prodded to action in her case only recently.
Bastien contested the charges, and “the parties were unable to come to a settlement agreement,” he wrote in an email. So on May 8, the department referred the case to the division of administrative hearings, where a judge can help sort out what happened and weigh in on what sanctions, if any, should be levied against her.
“It would be inaccurate to suggest the department is ‘just now’ pursuing action,” he wrote, responding to questions from the Sentinel.
He did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the effort to take action against the license of a nurse who has faced such serious allegations typically takes years.
Bastien, 53, and her attorney did not respond to phone calls and emails from the Sentinel seeking comment about the matter. Her request for a hearing does not detail which aspects of the health department’s complaint against her she is challenging.
Florida’s licensing database and court records indicate Bastien lives in Fort Lauderdale. It’s not clear if she is working as a nurse.
Wright also cautioned the Sentinel against comparing Florida’s disciplinary and licensure processes to other states’ practices, though its complaint against Bastien hinges on the 2023 order from Missouri, issued six months after the patient’s death.
“Each state enacts its own distinct statutes and rules which can cause variation across the country in how licensees can practice and, when necessary, face discipline,” he wrote.
Another nurse who was featured prominently in the Sentinel’s reporting agreed to surrender her license on May 12, four days after the story published. That nurse, Chipo Gavi, had been working in Maryland with a Florida-issued multi-state license for less than three months in 2023 when that state’s board received a complaint about her saying she “didn’t know how to care for patients.”
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The Sentinel discovered the development with Gavi’s license because her name was included erroneously at one point in the Bastien documents.
Gavi later told Maryland investigators she paid $16,000 and took some online classes but received no in-person training at Carleen Health Institute, a South Florida school the FBI and federal prosecutors say was was selling diplomas, according to documents filed in that state saying she could no longer work there.
Gavi’s relinquishment of her Florida license is pending final approval from the state nursing board.
Florida, citing Maryland’s action, filed a complaint against Gavi more than eight months ago. Gavi has not responded to emails from the Sentinel about the matter.
The Sentinel story published earlier this month featured both Gavi’s and Bastien’s cases as examples of Florida’s inconsistent approach to dealing with nurses who received degrees from roughly two dozen schools that sold fake nursing degrees to more than 7,000 people over the past several years. The state has yanked the licenses of 47 nurses who attended schools cited by the FBI probe but allowed others, including Bastien and Gavi, to remain eligible to work, even when it knew other states had banned them.
Bastien also received her nursing degree from Carleen, according to a cease-and-desist letter that the Missouri State Board of Nursing sent to her later that year. That state’s nursing board said it had determined that any credentials she possessed from the South Florida nursing school were “based on fraud.”
Roughly two months after Bastien started work at a large St. Louis hospital, she failed to recognize a patient was suffering from a rapid, abnormal heartbeat or to quickly call a doctor, the Missouri letter said. Her colleagues rushed in to the patient’s room after an alarm sounded and noticed Bastien had botched an IV placement and, later, that she was trying to feed the patient, who was also vomiting and struggling to breathe. She then disappeared and failed to respond to repeated phone calls, the letter said, and her patient died early the next morning.
Like other schools accused by the FBI, Carleen was approved to operate by the Florida’s nursing board and issued valid diplomas for several years, though its graduates struggled to pass the National Council Licensure Examination, often called the NCLEX, which new nurses must master in order to practice in Florida and other states. Prosecutors say school leaders eventually started selling diplomas to people who never completed the necessary coursework and clinical training.
That Carleen and the other schools implicated in Operation Nightingale once awarded legitimate credentials has complicated Florida’s response to the scandal.
“Nursing boards cannot assume every individual listed as having attended these schools was involved in fraud,” Wright wrote in response to questions from the Sentinel about Bastien. “They are legally required to provide due process to each licensee, allowing them to verify their education credentials.”
But Florida nursing board members have said multiple times during public meetings since the FBI investigation became public that they do not consider Carleen diplomas issued after Oct. 28, 2020, to be valid. Both Bastien and Gavi received their Carleen degrees after that date, according to documents from the nursing boards in Missouri and Maryland.
The now-closed school was founded by Carleen Noreus, who is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud and money laundering. She is one of the few operators charged in the scheme to plead not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial next month in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.
In addition to Bastien and Gavi, at least six other people with Carleen diplomas who were told they couldn’t work in other states are still licensed in Florida, according to documents from state nursing boards. But board members have revoked the licenses from others and told would-be nurses with Carleen diplomas they can’t take the NCLEX because they didn’t receive a legitimate education.
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