29-Year-Old Woman Arrested for Posing as Nurse, Treating 4,486 Patients Without License

A 29-year-old Florida woman has been arrested for allegedly posing as a registered nurse and treating thousands of patients without a valid license. Authorities say Autumn Bardisa handled 4,486 patients at a local hospital between July 2023 and January 2024, using another nurse’s license number. Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly called the incident “one of the most disturbing cases of medical fraud we’ve ever investigated.”

Bardisa was first hired as an advanced nurse technician under the supervision of a licensed nurse. She claimed to be an “education first” registered nurse, meaning she had completed academic training but had not yet passed the national licensing exam. Investigators say she later told the hospital she had passed, providing a license number belonging to another nurse with the same first name but a different surname. She allegedly explained the difference as the result of a recent marriage, but failed to provide a marriage certificate despite repeated requests.

The ruse collapsed in January when a co-worker checked her credentials after she was offered a promotion. It was then discovered that her only legitimate qualification was an expired certified nursing assistant license. She was fired on January 22, and hospital officials contacted law enforcement.

Detectives later found that the nurse whose license Bardisa used worked at another hospital and had attended nursing school at the same time as her, though the two were not personally acquainted. Bardisa now faces seven counts of practicing a health care profession without a license and seven counts of fraudulent use of personal identification. She is being held at the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility on a \$70,000 bond. The case adds to a growing list of nurse impersonation arrests across the United States, with recent cases reported in Pennsylvania and California.