Nurses’ ability to speak freely at stake

Today, nurse Carolyn

Strom will appear in court in Saskatoon to appeal the Saskatchewan Registered Nurses Association’s (SRNA) decision that found her guilty of professional misconduct.

In 2015, Strom had posted a comment on her personal Facebook page about the subpar end-of-life care her grandfather received, a post the SRNA considered to be in violation of their code of ethics and deserving of a $26,000 fine. Indignation followed among Canadian nurses, nursing students, experts, academics and the general public. Articles in the Globe and Mail, the Star-Phoenix, the Leader-Post and the Ottawa Citizen made clear that SRNA’s investigation and decision were considered to be misguided and overzealous. What is at stake?

The Strom case reveals the unrealistic expectation that nurses should behave as nurses 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even when they are off-duty.

Her status as a nurse appears to trump her status as (and most fundamental rights and freedoms of ) a regular citizen, which, according to the SRNA, denied her ability to speak freely on her personal Facebook page. The case also highlights the dangerous confluence of nurses’ professional and private lives. If nurses are not free to speak in their personal lives, how are they expected to speak out in their professional lives?

SRNA’s decision is farreaching and it has repercussions for all Canadian nurses who witness subpar practices — and a number of them do, every single day.

It is well-known that nurses are muzzled in their professional ability to convey concerns about care, patient safety, harassment and bullying, workplace violence and even fraud. In their professional lives, nurses are expected to follow strict communication channels, be loyal to their employers, and not speak to the media. And while in the workplace the muzzling of nurses is typically carried out by members of the organization (e.g. managers, senior administrators), nurses can now also expect reprisals from their professional college, whose mandate is to protect the integrity of nursing practice and the patients being cared for. This case could constitute a serious turning point for nurses and the nursing profession.

As co-founders of the Nursing Observatory, a collective working on issues related to the nursing profession, we take special interest in the outcome of this case and its potential impact on nurses’ ability to speak freely in both their personal and professional lives. Freedom of expression is a critical condition for nurses to fulfil their professional and ethical duties, including protecting the public. For this reason, the outcome of Strom’s court appeal concerns all of us.

We hope the court will see this case for what it is: a critical threat to nurses’ rights and, consequently, the safety of the public.