Autumn Marie Bardisa, Palm Coast, Florida woman arrested impersonating nurse, treating over 4400 patients without a medical license after nursing student failed her exams and forged her credentials using another person’s name.
A Florida woman has been accused of impersonating a nurse and treating over 4,400 ‘unsuspecting’ patients without a valid medical license.
Autumn Marie Bardisa, 29, of Palm Coast, was arrested on Tuesday, August 5 at her home in her scrubs for allegedly posing ‘as a licensed nurse and provided medical care to thousands of unsuspecting patients,’ the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) said in an August 6 news release.
Autumn Bardisa fake nurse
The ‘fake nurse’ began working at AdventHealth Palm Coast Parkway in Palm Coast in July 2023, before her contract was terminated on Jan. 22 of this year.
The arrest came after a seven-month investigation into Bardisa’s alleged crimes. Hospital administrators had reported ‘they had terminated Bardisa for impersonating a registered nurse by utilizing another individual’s license number and submitting false documentation to be employed as an advanced nurse technician’ at the facility, the release stated.
The hospital claimed that Bardisa had been hired as an advanced nurse tech to work under the supervision of a registered nurse, on July 3, 2023, the sheriff’s office confirmed.
‘When applying for the position, Bardisa indicated that she was an ‘education first’ registered nurse, meaning that she passed the required schooling to become a registered nurse but had not yet passed the national exam to obtain her license,’ the release noted.
Bardisa had then informed the hospital that she ‘had passed the exam and provided a license number matching an individual with her first name, Autumn, but with a different last name,’ police alleged.
She insisted she’d recently gotten married and had a new last name in a bid to explain herself.
Nursing student failed exams only to devise plan
‘Bardisa was then asked to provide her marriage license to AdventHealth, which she never did,’ the release alleged.
Despite never providing the information, Bardisa was offered a promotion in January 2025, and this sparked ‘interest among her colleagues,’ the FCSO alleged.
‘I would say this is greed or wanting a job so bad that you would manipulate a system and assume somebody’s identity to be able to practice,’ Flager County Sheriff Rick Staly said during a news conference, WESH reported. ‘You went to school, but you failed the exam’
Bardisa’s plan became foiled after a fellow employee ‘checked the status of Bardisa’s license and discovered that she had an expired certified nursing assistant license, which the employee reported to administrators,’ the release noted.
During an investigation, AdventHealth ‘discovered that Bardisa had never provided her marriage license as requested to confirm her identity,’ the sheriff’s office said, stating that the suspect’s contract was then terminated earlier this year ‘after she failed to confirm her identity.’
After the hospital contacted the FCSO to conduct a criminal investigation, detectives and investigators with the Florida Department of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ‘reviewed documents and conducted interviews with AdventHealth employees and the nurse whose identity Bardisa stole,’ the release further stated.
‘The investigation determined that Bardisa shared a first name with the other nurse, who was employed by AdventHealth, but at a different hospital, and had attended school with her. However, the two did not personally know each other,’ the FCSO confirmed.
Bardisa has since been charged on seven counts of practicing a health care profession without a license and seven counts of fraudulent use of personal identification information, People Mag confirmed.
Stated FCSO Sheriff Rick Staly, ‘This woman potentially put thousands of lives at risk by pretending to be someone she was not and violating the trust of patients, their families, AdventHealth and an entire medical community.’
The ‘fake nurse’ remains held at the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility on $70K bond.
Barda is scheduled to be arraigned on September 2nd.
