Manitoba’s nursing regulator has separately censured three nurses, for improperly accessing someone’s medical records, for inappropriately touching students and for making “false and defamatory statements” about the regulator on a podcast.
The longest of those recently posted censures was a five-page decision about a nurse accused of a series of incidents involving nursing students who were under his supervision before he was suspended in November 2023.
The decision from the College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba said the nurse was a clinical education facilitator on a term contract at the University of Manitoba who “overwhelmingly failed to meet [his] professional standards and obligations while supervising nursing students in the clinical environment.”
“Your conduct represented a serious breach of the trust placed in you by the University of Manitoba, the college, and, most importantly, the nursing students under your supervision,” the decision said.
The nurse allowed students to perform clinical skills they hadn’t yet learned in the lab, the decision said, which led to a procedure experience one student described as “humiliating,” where the nurse “made comments about the patient’s anatomy that the student found distressing and inappropriate.”
Several of the nurse’s students also reported that he made comments about students’ appearance, asked personal questions about their relationships and engaged in unwanted physical contact — “including touching a student’s hair, forearm, and lower back, and tying personal protective equipment on students in a manner that made them uncomfortable,” the decision said.
The decision also cited incidents where the nurse failed to report a needle stick injury a student suffered during a clinical session, did not address gaps in how he was teaching the students and shared photos he took on his personal phone during procedures in patient rooms with students on the Telegram app.
It said while the nurse was told to limit contact with students to emergencies, he continued to contact them through Telegram and at times discussed individual students with other members of the group, “including negative comments about specific students, indications of who might fail, and expressions of reluctance to support certain students.”
“Students reported fear of retribution should they raise concerns,” the decision said, which “undermined student confidentiality, psychological safety, and the trust required in the instructor-student relationship.”
The decision said the nurse had declined to do required orientation when he accepted his position, citing full-time work as a nurse somewhere else.
That “contributed to the subsequent failures identified during the investigation, including the failure to follow needlestick reporting requirements, medication safety expectations, and privacy and social media policies.”
The nurse was ordered to pay $5,000 in costs.
‘Grossly self-serving’
Another nurse who engaged in “abusive, rude, insubordinate, and unprofessional” conduct with the regulator between 2016 and 2019 was also censured after doing an interview on a podcast where he “made false and defamatory statements” about his interactions with the college and its complaints committee.
That decision said the nurse’s behaviour “undermined the role of the college’s mandate, brought shame upon your character and reflected negatively on the discipline of registered nursing.”
That nurse voluntarily surrendered his certificate in August 2019, during a period when he’d “expressed significant dissatisfaction with the college’s processes.”
In December 2020, when the nurse was no longer actively practising, he did an interview where he identified himself as a former registered nurse and made statements justifying his conduct, the decision said.
“The committee finds that you communicated publicly in a manner that was grossly self-serving, malicious, and dishonest. You prioritized your personal interests and reputation over your professional and ethical obligations as a professional,” it said.
“Your conduct reflects extremely poor judgment and a failure to recognize your broader professional responsibilities.”
Recognition doesn’t excuse wrongdoing
A third recent censure involved a nurse who in 2023 and 2024 twice inappropriately accessed the personal health records of someone she knew personally who was not under her care.
That nurse viewed the person’s medical records, including diagnostic results, the decision said. When her employer became aware of that in 2024, it prompted an audit.
“You demonstrated recognition of wrongdoing; however, it does not excuse the severity of the confidentiality violations you have committed,” the decision said.
During the same period, another incident came to light where the nurse gave an antibiotic prescription to a former colleague’s child, without following her clinic’s appointment and documentation protocols.
“The public must trust that RNs only access confidential personal health information when necessary for patient care, and your repeated privacy breaches have violated that trust. Even dire personal concerns do not excuse this breach of confidentiality,” the decision said.
“Acting as a health-care provider for someone without a proper patient-provider relationship placed the patient at risk by depriving them access to appropriate care processes.”
Both those nurses were ordered to pay $2,500 in costs.