Ex-AdventHealth Nurse Avoids Prison Time in Plea to 5 Years’ Probation for Fraud and Unlicensed Practice

Autumn Marie Bardisa, the 29-year-old former AdventHealth Palm Coast nurse accused of practicing without a license and fraudulently using someone else’s identity, pleaded today to two of the original 14 charges filed against her and was sentenced to five years on probation. She may terminate probation after 36 months. Adjudication of guilt was withheld: Bardisa will not be a convicted felon, assuming she completes her probation without violations. 

She had faced up to 10 years in prison, and a minimum of 23 months in state prison, based on sentencing guidelines. 

Bardisa had worked at the hospital for a year and a half–from July 3, 2023 to  Jan. 22, 2025, when she was fired after an internal hospital investigation. She had documented contact as a nurse with 4,486 patients, according to the Flagler County Sheriff’s investigation, which AdventHealth limited, citing privacy laws. 

The extremely generous plea, negotiated by her attorney, Josh Davis, and Assistant State Attorney Tara Libby, may have gotten a strategic assist from the hospital, which Davis said “1,000 percent” wanted the case to go away, as it may have exposed administrative vulnerabilities or liabilities that enabled Bardisa’s true credentials to evade detection, allowing her to commit her crime: the hospital since Bardisa’s arrest last August has maintained radio silence on the case despite numerous media inquiries. 

Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols deemed the resolution just for other reasons. 

“The concerns that I had were, I thought that Ms. Bardisa was somebody who was off the street and had no medical training whatsoever, and kind of went to the hospital, represented that she was a nurse, and put all kinds of lives in danger,” the judge said. 

That was nowhere near true, the judge said. “She had all the training to become an RN. She graduated from the program” as an RN. The hospital hired her with the understanding that she’d pass her exam, similarly, the judge said, to a law firm hiring a lawyer on the understanding that the lawyer would soon pass the bar exam. 

“There is absolutely zero evidence that countless lives were on the line, zero evidence of that,” Nichols said. “The information that has been presented is that she was excellent at her job and she excelled at her job.” She so excelled that she was promoted, –and provoked resentment among colleagues for her swift rise. 

Bardisa herself, acknowledging her mistake, alluded to that resentment as she at least partially shifted blame, as did her lawyer, outside the courtroom, after the plea. “There’s a lot more to the story than I’m able to or be comfortable discussing,” Bardisa, a single mother, said. “But I’m just glad it ended out the way that it did, and my daughter wasn’t harmed at all, or didn’t have to face any of the backlash.” 

The judge herself had spoken of Bardisa’s colleagues digging around out of jealousy, though she left no doubt that Bardisa’s actions “were wrong. She will pay for those actions severely.”

Davis said the hospital had her paperwork all along, and that she never stole anyone’s license. Had she been a mediocre nurse, there would have been no accusations, he said, and she might still have been working. “The reason that we’re in the courthouse, though, is because she was really good at her job, and she makes people jealous,” he said during the interview. 

Not exactly: “What she’s here for today is the fact that she lied and she did not pass her exam,” the judge had noted. She used another woman’s identity, changing her last name to allege that she had recently married. “Incredibly poor judgment, and lied to her employer,” the judge said. “But this is not a case of a person coming off the street with no medical training. That’s not what this case is. She’s going to have severe ramifications.” (Davis later acknowledged that “yeah, there was the criminal act, which is why we’re here, but that entire thing never comes out unless she’s good at what she does, because she would have been left alone.”)

The harshest words Bardisa heard during her plea hearing were from Autumn “Ruba” Hood, the woman whose identity Bardisa had stolen. Hood had a license. Bardisa claimed she had married and her name had changed to Hood. “It was never a license alteration,” her attorney said. “She had the same name, same w2, form, same social security number from the very time she got the job until the time she was released.” But it was a stolen name. 

The real Hood spoke on zoom, and at one point had to be admonished by the judge for repeatedly attacking Bardisa personally. It was not a forgiving moment as she referred to Bardisa as “the offender.” 

“I have a billion whys floating around in my head. At the end of the day, I will never know why you chose to steal my license, why you chose to treat people, why you chose to put countless lives on the line,” the woman, herself a nurse, said. “You chose all of these decisions so easily that it’s what is appalling and scary to me. You knew exactly what you were doing, and now you have consequences to face. I don’t feel sorry for you. In fact, no one should have an ounce of empathy for you. You stealing my license has caused a ripple of anxiety to embed within me. I have done everything right, and somehow you have weaseled your way to cheating through it. I won’t allow that anxiety to fester any longer again. You knew what you did, and I cannot be convinced otherwise. You never were, and never will be an actual nurse.” 

That was when the judge intervened. Bardisa was not a licensed nurse, but was not lacking a nurse’s credentials otherwise. For all the thousands of patients Bardisa treated, not a single complaint has come to light. 

Bardisa, worked her way through school, raised her daughter, and eventually did pass the nursing license, which she has now surrendered as part of the plea agreement (and would have had to surrender anyway). She is to not reapply for work in nursing in Florida for the duration of the probation. Bardisa said she has no intention to work in healthcare again, given the target she feels she has on her back and the high profile of the case. 

“Because of her poor decisions, she has thrown it all away,” the judge said. “If it wasn’t so tragic on so many different levels, it would make an incredible Lifetime movie. It is really sad what’s happened here, but this is an individual that I do not believe should be incarcerated. First time offender. Never been in trouble before her incredibly poor decision making.” 

A Floridian reading about the case paid the $1,000 fine Bardisa had to pay as part of her court costs, Davis said. Bardisa is working on a master’s degree–she did not disclose the discipline–and draws income from art she makes “on the side,” she said. 

“Everyone regrets, you know, not crossing our i’s, dotting our t’s, making sure everything was complete,” she said, transposing her t’s and i’s, “but I think a mistake shouldn’t ruin someone’s life.”