A Palm Coast woman spent the better part of a year walking hospital hallways in scrubs, caring for patient after patient, collecting a paycheck — and doing all of it without ever holding a valid nursing license. This week, she left a Flagler County courtroom without serving a single day behind bars.
Autumn Bardisa, 29, entered a no-contest plea Tuesday on charges of unlicensed practice of healthcare and fraudulent use of identification information, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.
Judge Dawn Nichols handed down the sentence: five years of probation, 50 hours of community service, and a written apology owed to the real nurse whose license number Bardisa commandeered to pull off the scheme.
No jail time was ordered. Adjudication was withheld.
The case drew attention not just for what Bardisa allegedly did, but for how long she was able to sustain the deception inside a functioning hospital environment with established credentialing protocols.
Between June 2024 and January 2025, Bardisa clocked in regularly at AdventHealth, where she presented herself to staff, supervisors, and patients alike as a fully credentialed registered nurse.
She was not.
Investigators later established that Bardisa had no valid nursing license at any point during her employment. The patient count she racked up during that span exceeded 4,400 people.
The story of how she got in — and how long it took to catch her — is one that left investigators unsettled.
Bardisa entered the hospital system using an “education first” classification, a designation that exists for nursing school graduates waiting on exam results. From there, she escalated her claims, telling hospital staff she had since passed her licensing exam and submitting a license number as proof.
The number she provided belonged to another nurse — one who happened to share her first name.
When administrators began pressing Bardisa on inconsistencies in her paperwork, she offered an explanation: a name change following marriage. She was asked to produce documentation. She never did.
The hospital promoted her in January 2025 regardless.
It took a single coworker willing to run an independent credential check to bring the entire fabrication down. That check revealed Bardisa held only an expired certified nursing assistant license — a credential far short of what her position required.
The coworker’s findings set off mandatory hospital reporting and triggered an investigation drawing in multiple law enforcement agencies.
The scope of the investigation reflected the seriousness with which authorities approached the case. The involvement of multiple agencies signaled that officials viewed the matter as extending well beyond a routine employment fraud situation.
Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly did not mince words in his assessment of what Bardisa had done. “Nursing is a noble profession about caring for those in need, but there is a right way and wrong way to go about it, and she chose the wrong way by using a real nurse’s license,” Staly said, stating her conduct had “potentially endangered patients.”
Staly added that Bardisa had effectively “ruined her career” through her choices.
The sheriff’s remarks underscored a broader concern shared by law enforcement — that patients who sought care at AdventHealth during that window had no way of knowing the person treating them had never been licensed to do so.
Under the conditions attached to her probation, Bardisa is prohibited from working in any medical role for a minimum of three years and as long as five. She also surrendered to the Florida Department of Health a nursing license she had managed to obtain following her arrest.
The real nurse whose license number was used without consent is owed a formal written apology from Bardisa as a direct condition of the sentence — a requirement built into the plea agreement by the court.
Members of the public who believe they received treatment from Bardisa during her time at AdventHealth are urged to contact the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office.
