Florida Woman Faked Being a Licensed Nurse, Treated 4,000+ Patients, Only Arrested After Hospital Discovered Fraud When Trying to Promote Her
The Independent – Police in Florida arrested a 29-year-old woman after she allegedly impersonated a registered nurse and provided medical care to more than 4,400 patients at a Flagler County hospital without a valid license.
Autumn Bardisa’s alleged crimes came to light in January when hospital officials reviewing her credentials for a charge‑nurse promotion realized she held only an expired Certified Nursing Assistant license. That discovery triggered an internal investigation and ultimately led to her termination.
Bardisa was originally hired in July 2023 at AdventHealth Palm CoastParkway as an advanced nurse technician under the supervision of a registered nurse. She had claimed to be an “education-first” registered nurse, meaning she had completed the required coursework but had not yet passed the licensing exam.
During hiring, Bardisa claimed to have passed the exam and gave a license number matching her first name but a different last name. She claimed a recent marriage to explain the different last name, but never provided a marriage license to verify it, officials said.
The investigation found Bardisa shared a first name and school with a real AdventHealth nurse, but didn’t personally know her.
This is straight out of the show Suits (sort of). If Suits was a show about nurses instead of lawyers. In Suits, the main character Mike Ross was the brightest, most promising young lawyer in all of New York City. But he never actually went to law school. He was a fraud practicing law under false pretenses. Which is highly illegal. But I still always found it annoying how people acted like Mike practicing law without a degree was the most despicable, most fucked up a thing a human has ever done. They acted like he was putting lives in danger, despite knowing full-well that he was a phenomenal lawyer, and any client who had him working their case was markedly better off for it. I always felt like Mike should have been able to give a disclaimer, "Just so you know, I don't actually have a law degree. Are you ok with that?"
It's not like he wouldn't come with a stack of references from prestigious lawyers who'd vouch that he knew the law better than all of the other Harvard educated lawyers at Pearson-Spector combined. And if you're allowed to represent yourself in court without a license, why shouldn't you be able to appoint a different person without a license to do it?
Now I can see how in the case of fake nurse Autumn Bardisa, things might be a little different. For one, it's not a completely fictional television. For two, providing medical treatment without the proper training... that's playing with someone's life a little more directly than representing them in court. Autumn Bardisa theoretically could have killed a patient on the spot. I'm not sure how, but shitty nurses have certainly done it before.
However, Autumn Bardisa, much like Mike Ross in Suits, was not a shitty nurse. She was on the verge of a promotion for a nursing job in a country where we have a pretty significant shortage of nurses.
Nightingale College – On a national level, the projected supply of nursing staff for 2026 will account for 93.43% of the demand. The highest level of nursing shortage is seen for RNs, followed by LPNs, while for nurse practitioners, the staff supply surpasses demand by an extra 32%.
Here are the nursing shortage statistics for 2026:
- Registered nurses – 10% shortage, equivalent to 350,540 unoccupied positions
- Licensed practical nurses – 7% shortage, equivalent to 46,920 unoccupied positions
- Nurse practitioners – 32% surplus, equivalent to an excess of 100,620 NPs
- Nurse Anesthetists – 5% surplus, equivalent to an excess of 2,660 anesthetists
- Nurse midwives – 5% surplus, equivalent to an excess of 570 midwives
That sucks. It sucks that Flagler County Hospital is going to be down a non-qualified, yet effective nurse. It sucks that Autumn Bardisa put all that effort into illegally skirting the system instead of legally obtaining her license. It also kinda sucks that Autumn Bardisa was so easily able to outperform legitimate nurses without any of the proper education. I'm not sure if that's more of an indictment on the hospital she worked for, the nurses she worked with, the nursing schools they attended, or the healthcare system as a whole. Seems to me if we have a signifiant nursing shortage, and someone is able to walk in off the street and nurse well enough to be up for a promotion, maybe we could streamline the process to earning a nursing degree a bit. Or at least make it a little more affordable.
I don't exactly know what I'm talking about in that regard. I'm only basing that thought off of this one isolated incident. I'd imagine plenty of untrained people could walk in off the street and successfully complete a handful of the tasks nurses are assigned with. But it's the other more rare situations where an untrained nurse would be liable to make a lethal mistake.
At least this woman seemed to take her nursing seriously. I'm sure that's more than can be said about some fully-educated nurses. The irony of it all is that had she been a worse nurse, she'd have never been up for that promotion. Flagler Country would have probably never have double checked her license. Autumn would probably still be nursing today. Let that be a lesson to anybody out there working a job under false pretenses. Don't try too hard. Your bullshit resume can get you in the building. It's easy to get an entry-level job in an industry that desperately needs employees. But the minute you're actually competing for a position, and somebody actually cares to review your resume… the jig is up.
