Nursing home cited for ‘medication incidents’
Facility at heart of murder case taken to task by province over dozens of mistakes last year
Inspection reports show an Ontario longterm-care home where a former nurse is accused of killing seven seniors was taken to task by the province for dozens of “medication incidents” just before it was ordered to stop admitting patients.
The recently released reports, which are dated Jan. 24, indicate there were 41 drug-related incidents at the Caressant Care nursing home in Woodstock between early August and late December of last year.
The records show 22 such incidents involved medication not given to patients, six involved patients given the wrong dosage, five involved drugs given to the wrong person, three were doses given at the wrong time and one was medication administered without a prescription.
The home was also ordered to document cases in which patients experienced adverse reactions to drugs, something inspectors found it had failed to do.
The incidents laid out in the reports took place more than two years after the departure of Elizabeth Wettlaufer, a former nurse now charged with eight counts of first-degree murder, seven of which involve people who lived in the home at the time.
Caressant Care was told to stop accepting new patients on Jan. 25 after the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care expressed concerns about the safety of current or future residents.
The ministry said at the time that concerns about the home related to incidents that occurred since August 2016 and did not involve “any issues that the police have been asked to investigate.”
Police launched an investigation in late September after becoming aware of informa- tion that Wettlaufer had given to a psychiatric hospital in Toronto that caused them concern, a police source has told The Canadian Press.
The 49-year-old former nurse was arrested in October and charged with murder in connection with the deaths of residents at nursing homes in Woodstock and London, Ont. Police alleged Wettlaufer used drugs to kill the seniors while she worked at the facilities between 2007 and 2014.
Last month, police laid additional attempted murder and aggravated assault charges and exhumed two bodies as part of their ongoing investigation.
The allegations against Wettlaufer have not been proved in court.
The next court hearing in her case is set for Wednesday.
Records from the College of Nurses of Ontario show Wettlaufer was first registered as a nurse in August 1995 but resigned Sept. 30, 2016, and is no longer a registered nurse.
Caressant Care, which owns 15 long-termcare homes in Ontario, declined to comment. In one of the reports, however, the f acility’s director of nursing was reported to have “acknowledged that numerous medication incidents had happened, that they were concerning and required action by the home.”