Reinstatement of privacy-breach nurse rankles
Snooping victims say they are planning civil suit; co-worker ‘absolutely disgusted’
VANCOUVER — Victims of a Powell River nurse who was fired — then reinstated — after accessing private medical files of colleagues and other people she knew say they are planning to pursue a civil suit to obtain justice.
Michelle Chisholm, 43, a licensed practical nurse at Willingdon Creek Village care home, was fired by Vancouver Coastal Health in January 2015 for snooping into the files of 14 people in 21 instances over 11 months in 2014.
She was reinstated in March 2016 after the B.C. Nurses’ Union successfully grieved the termination.
In April, the B.C. Labour Relations Board dismissed Vancouver Coastal Health’s second appeal and upheld the arbitrator’s findings that termination was “excessive,” and that Chisholm has expressed remorse and could be rehabilitated.
“I’m absolutely disgusted by it,” said a co-worker who did not want to be named. Her private records were improperly accessed by Chisholm and she has received no apology. “There was no justice in any of this.”
The message the arbitrator’s decision sends is “our privacy doesn’t matter a thing.”
At the time of the breaches, the co-worker’s partner was Chisholm’s former husband.
Vancouver Coastal Health’s appeal was based on the argument that Chisholm’s expression of remorse and rehabilitation occurred after she was terminated, and couldn’t be used to determine whether the firing was appropriate “because it would require the employer at the time of the discharge decision to weigh facts not in existence, and which may never exist.”
In its decision, the board cited testimony by Chisholm that she was “overwhelmed” during the meeting with her employer and that “it was all a blur.” The hearing also heard she was stressed due to a death in her family and her daughter’s move to live with her biological father.
Tekla Kenmuir, whose father’s file was accessed by Chisholm after his suicide in 2010, said Chisholm’s snooping into her dad’s and other family members’ files had malicious intent.
“A family suicide was the darkest experience of my life,” she said. “To know someone with intent can access that information brings it back in a way that is disturbing.”
Kenmuir’s brother was Chisholm’s former husband.
Vancouver Coastal Health considers the matter closed.