Tracking drugs an issue, inquiry told
The Woodstock nursing home where Elizabeth Wettlaufer injected seven residents with deadly doses of insulin had a systemic problem keeping track of narcotics, the home’s former administrator told a public inquiry Thursday.
“I did not believe it was just (Wettlaufer),” Brenda Van Quaethem, the former administrator of Caressant Care, testified on the third day of a public inquiry meant to uncover how the former nurse was able to embark on a killing spree from 2007 to 2014 that left eight dead at two Southwestern Ontario long-term care homes and six injured.
The systemic challenges with tracking narcotics are among the reasons Caressant Care in Woodstock didn’t discipline Wettlaufer after a personal support worker there wrote to management that Wettlaufer wasn’t counting medications properly, Van Quaethem said. The former administrator admitted she first became concerned that patient safety might have been compromised by Wettlaufer in August 2012 when the home wrote on a disciplinary form that continued errors by the nurse could lead to a referral to the College of Nurses of Ontario, the profession’s regulatory body, to consider her fitness to work.
Under questioning by a lawyer representing some of the families and friends of Wettlaufer’s victims, Van Quaethem retracted a statement she made earlier this week that Wettlaufer had the ability to become a good nurse. “Given what you wrote on this disciplinary note, do you still believe it?” lawyer Alex Van Kralingen asked.
“No,” Van Quaethem replied. The former administrator admitted she played no role in the writing of a letter of recommendation for Wettlaufer after the latter was fired in 2014. The letter was written by the home’s corporate headquarters to resolve a grievance filed by the Ontario Nurses Association.
Asked if she agreed with the laudatory letter for a nurse who had placed patients at risk, Van Quaethem said, “I can’t answer that.” Earlier, she told another lawyer representing families of victims that had it not been for the nurses’ union, Wettlaufer may have been fired sooner. Wettlaufer was sentenced to life in prison after confessing to killing eight residents of nursing homes in Woodstock and London and trying to kill six more.