Nursing union ‘did not have all the dots’
Lawyer for union says it was kept in the dark on Wettlaufer complaints
The union representing Elizabeth Wettlaufer said it was kept in the dark about most of the 20 to 30 incidents and concerns highlighted in her personnel record at the Caressant Care Nursing Home in Woodstock, Ont., where she murdered seven residents, a public inquiry was told on Thursday.
Ontario Nurses’ Association lawyer Kate Hughes made the assertion in the form of a series of questions during a tough cross-examination of the home’s top boss who answered them in the affirmative.
Caressant Care administrator Brenda Van Quaethem acknowledged she was among the very few who had access to the full picture of Wettlaufer’s troubled work history there.
Hughes described Wettlaufer’s thick personnel file as akin to a children’s connect-the-dots game.
“The union did not have all the dots,” Hughes said. “Just you did.”
Wettlaufer, 50, pleaded guilty a year ago to killing eight residents under her care in two nursing homes, and seriously harming six others.
She was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
A public inquiry, headed by Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Eileen Gillese, is looking into how Wettlaufer was able to give patients lethal overdoses of insulin without being noticed.
The seven victims who were residents of Caressant Care were murdered during her employment there between 2007 and 2014.
Wettlaufer was cited for a raft of problems at the home, many of them brought to management’s attention by co-workers, mostly personal support workers (PSWs) and registered practical nurses (RPNs).
Wettlaufer often worked the overnight shift which was difficult to staff, the inquiry was told.
As the only registered nurse, she was the senior-most employee on duty and was in charge of the PSWs and RPNs, who complained she was a bully.
They expressed alarm over the way she treated residents. One described how Wettlaufer ignored that a constipated resident was clearly in pain as she performed a bowel disimpaction on the individual.
Van Quaethem described how she didn’t put much stock in a number of complaints about the nurse. She testified that she accepted Wettlaufer’s explanation that she was unfairly singled out by colleagues because she was gay. One complaint described Wettlaufer acting oddly and inappropriately by pulling down her pants to show a colleague a boil on her groin.
Van Quaethem said she didn’t take that one too seriously because it is something that people who know each other well might do.
The administrator dismissed a complaint that Wettlaufer disrespectfully shook her butt in the face of a resident, saying she was just trying to be funny.
Another colleague reported Wettlaufer for telling a resident who was acting out that he was going to be sent to a psychiatric hospital and injected with an antipsychotic. Van Quaethem said she thought the nurse was mimicking the resident’s behaviour in an attempt to get him to see how difficult he was being.
About complaints that Wettlaufer slept a lot while working on the overnight shift, the administrator said that was OK because the nurse did it on her breaks. There were also complaints about Wettlaufer from residents. A woman in her 50s, who had the cognitive capacity of a child, twice reported that Wettlaufer slapped her. She was not believed.
Wettlaufer’s employee file also included numerous citations for medication errors, including one which ultimately led to dismissal after seven years of working at the home. On one occasion when she was in trouble, Wettlaufer told her employer she had been diagnosed with bipolar and obsessive compulsive disorders, and was in the midst of having her medication changed.
Van Quaethem said she figured Wettlaufer’s doctor would have intervened if the nurse was not fit to work.
The nurse also told her employer her father was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Despite these stresses, Wettlaufer’s work file showed she had been asked to work double shifts and seven-days straight.
Van Quaethem said because of a nursing shortage, the home had difficulty hiring RNs. The long-term care sector is a challenging one to work in and does not pay as well as hospitals, the administrator said.
Despite the troubling behaviour, she described Wettlaufer as respectful and compassionate.
However, she answered in the affirmative when asked by Hughes if the nurse was a source of “significant and constant problems.”
Van Quaethem testified she would have fired Wettlaufer earlier were it not for concerns of having to take on the ONA.
But in response to questions from Hughes, she revealed she did not follow the collective agreement between the home and the union when it came to disciplining the nurse.
The contract called for sanctions to be removed from a nurses’ record if 18 months went by and no new sanctions were imposed. But if new sanctions were added, disciplinary action would continue and could be stepped up.
“You never looked at it all as a pattern, did you?” Hughes asked.
“Not on paper,” the administrator responded.