Snooping nurse wanted privacy
Woman found guilty of accessing patient files fought to keep her disciplinary hearing secret
A Peterborough nurse has been found guilty of professional misconduct for accessing almost 300 confidential patient records at Peterborough Regional Health Centre over two years, at a disciplinary hearing she fought to keep secret.
Mandy Edgerton (formerly Edgerton-Reid) was slapped with a fourmonth suspension and a formal reprimand on Wednesday, by a fivemember panel at the College of Nurses of Ontario.
The Toronto Star’s lawyers successfully challenged her effort to hold the hearing in secret.
The panel found she committed professional misconduct by accessing 285 patient files at the Peterborough hospital that she had no authorization or consent to look at.
The snooping occurred between 2010 and 2012, while she was a nurse there.
Once Edgerton gets her registration back, she will have to notify any employer for a further 18 months of the misconduct, and she’ll have to attend three meetings with a nursing expert.
The panel found she had committed another act of professional misconduct for failing to maintain appropriate nurse-client boundaries with someone for whom she was providing home care between June 2012 and October 2013, by getting too engaged with the family through doing things like bringing personal friends to the home of the client.
Edgerton admitted to these allegations at the hearing.
College counsel Megan Shortreed told the panel the college has seen “an increasing number of these cases” where there has been “multiple unauthorized accesses to personal health information.”
She said such a sanction will “send a message to (Edgerton) that she does not engage in future misconduct,” and will also warn other nurses in Ontario that “misconduct of this nature will be dealt with seriously by this college.”
Edgerton and six other employees were fired by the Peterborough Regional Health Centre amid allegations they violated patient privacy in 2011 and 2012.
She was also named as a defendant in a $5.6-million class-action lawsuit, alleging breach of privacy.
She was originally also accused of accessing personal health information about a student and sharing it with other nursing students she taught at Fleming College, which fired her in 2012, but she was not found guilty of anything with regard to this incident.
Asked after the hearing for comment, Edgerton said she had “none whatsoever, not to the Toronto Star.”
The website of the College of Nurses of Ontario lists her current employer as Manulife Financial, but a spokesperson for the company contacted Tuesday said there was no person with that name working there.
Edgerton’s lawyer, Robert Stephenson, argued that she had accessed the files of patients she had “undocumented interactions” with so as to do things such as provide reports at the end of her shift.
He also said she accessed reports for patients not directly in her care as part of teaching nursing students at Fleming College.
He said that when police and other community services alerted the hospital they were bringing someone in, she would sometimes proactively look up records.
“(Edgerton) did not disclose any personal health information to anyone,” Stephenson said, adding she did not misuse the information in any way.
“Hospitals, who play an important role in this process and in ensuring the public’s safety and public confidence, are not here today,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Peterborough Regional Health Centre, Michelene Ough, wrote in an emailed statement that the hospital “takes patient privacy very seriously,” and that employees are required to sign a confidentiality agreement and take privacy training every year, which Edgerton did.
She added that the centre did perform random audits of accesses to patients’ personal health information before March 2012, when Edgerton’s access was audited.
A 2015 Star investigation found hundreds of hospital privacy violations are not reported to the privacy commissioner’s office.
Michael Crystal, a lawyer for patients in the class-action suit, said the ruling sends a strong signal that the college is taking invasion of privacy very seriously.
“This is a very, very positive development along the road, and I think it will encourage and bootstrap other players — the privacy commissioner, the Ministry of the Attorney General — to pursue prosecutions in this area,” he said. “It’s not a game changer, but it’s major.
“To be suspended says, ‘Hey, we’re giving you the second most serious sanction, and that’s to send a message to would-be snoopers.’ ”
“To be suspended says, ‘Hey, we’re giving you the second most serious sanction, and that’s to send a message to would-be snoopers.’ ” MICHAEL CRYSTAL PATIENTS’ LAWYER