Few times in history has nursing become such a lucrative career.

"A good nursing supervisor, a manager, can make more than $100,000 a year in some cases, said Devon Herrick, Senior Fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis.

Salaries spiked because of a shortage in the industry. But among the hardworking dedicated nurses are some with questionable backgrounds.

We compared names and dates of births of every currently licensed nurse against the Texas Department of Public Safety criminal database.

The result revealed that thousands of Texas nurses have arrest records. In fact, one in 20 of them have records.

More than half of those work in hospitals and nursing homes. Some have charges as serious as arson, attempted murder and deadly conduct.

But what seemed even more remarkable was that the Texas Board of Nursing didn't know about many of the arrests since its own background checks won't be complete until 2012, according to the Board's Director of Enforcement Tony Diggs.

So how can we find this data in a matter of hours and it takes the state years to find these?

"Well, I don't know the system you're using, but let me emphasize our check is a national check," Diggs said when asked how the data News 8 found in hours wasn't discovered yet by the board. "It's not a local check. It's not a state check. It's a national check."

It is also a fingerprint check. Until recently though, it was up to nurses to themselves to disclose their pasts.

"I guess what surprises me is that you were able to find it so easily because the technology is out there," Herrick said.

The state did not look at criminal backgrounds of nurses until 2004 when the legislature ordered it. While all new applicants and transfers from other states get checked immediately, the 283,000 currently licensed nurses are taking a while to process.

The Board of Nursing said it is only checking a fraction of those renewing every month. The Board wanted to do them all at once in 2005, but legislators said spending $5 million at that time for the background checks would be too expensive.

The Governor's Mansion is receiving twice that amount, $10 million, right now in updates.

"The funding of the Governor's Mansion doesn't come out of the same budget we use to fund different agencies in the State of Texas," said State Representative Fred Brown, (R) Bryan.

Still, it's taxpayer dollars.

Rep. Brown said the Board of Nursing finally got all the money it needed last year when the state had a surplus, leaving him curious why background checks are taking so long.

"We gave them the authority to do as many as they could and they would have the money appropriated for it," he said.

The Board acknowledges it got authority to conduct thousands of outstanding background checks, but the executive director said it didn't receive enough extra staff to process and investigate them all.

Since December, Diggs' investigators discovered that more than 460 currently licensed nurses have records.

Depending on the charge, nurses are sanctioned, have their license suspended or revoked.

Some of the worst things we found [were] inappropriate sexual contact with a minor, Diggs said.

One Garland nurse pled guilty to indecency with a 12-year-old girl in 1992. He completed probation and kept his nursing license, although it does stipulate he is not allowed to work with patients under eighteen.

"I believe so, yes," Diggs said when asked if Texas patients are safe.

Texas' largest hospitals said they do not hire anyone with a criminal record that would be job-related.

But several hospitals admit that each nurse's background is considered on a case-by-case basis.

Herrick said that's because there's a shortage of them, perhaps now exacerbated, as backgrounds of Texas nurses are slowly uncovered

KBTX-TV wanted to find out the background of nurses in this area.

A check of currently licensed Registered Nurses in Bryan and College Station shows charges like thefts, DWI, marijuana possession, criminal trespassing and driving while license suspended.

News Three called The College Station Medical Center and Saint Joseph Regional Health Center about their nurses -- both say they hire an outside company to do full criminal history checks before the nurses are hired.