email article Joe Flores, NP, JD, has been defending nurses against investigations by the Texas Board of Nursing for several years. Flores, a Corpus Christi attorney and part-time hospice care nurse practitioner, rarely turns away these clients. He feels it's important they have representation if they have a case. But since the pandemic started, Flores has had to turn away many cases. Demand for his services is up, he says, as nurses are being investigated by the Board even as they struggle to perform their jobs with the added stress of the pandemic. The nature of the complaints is also different: "I have never had [board] reports regarding masks, gowns; this is new, this is particular to the pandemic," said Flores, who is now representing a dozen nurses facing potential discipline. "They are overworked, understaffed." But, he added, patients and management "just report them" and the board opens cases against many of them -- as a nursing board did recently against a Minnesota nurse