‘Cone of silence’: Daughter left in the dark about nurse complaint

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The daughter of a Saint John senior who was evicted from Loch Lomond Villa says she’s being left in the dark about the handling of a complaint she filed against a nurse involved in her mother’s care.

Susan Steels filed that complaint in June 2021 with the Nursing Association of New Brunswick (NANB), the regulatory college for registered nurses and nurse practitioners.

Her 83-year-old mother Pauline Breen had just died in hospice following her nursing home eviction. Breen had been evicted after Steels and her sisters started questioning their mother’s care at Loch Lomond Villa.

Almost three years later, Steels says she’s still waiting to see a nurse involved in her mother’s care held accountable for her actions by the regulatory college, but a recent change in NANB’s complaint process has largely cut her out of the process.

“They’ve created a cone of silence and (they say), ‘You’re not part of it,’” Steels said. “I don’t know if they’re hoping I’ll go away or they don’t care if I stay or go because nobody is holding them accountable to communicate to me or the public, so it’s no sweat off their back to ignore me.”

“There’s no consequence. There’s no accountability.”

Under the new rules of procedure, NANB now serves as the prosecutor of the allegations once a complaint has been referred to the college’s discipline committee.

“This change is consistent with best regulatory practices in Canada, and responds to feedback provided to NANB from complainants and respondents about the complaints process,” the college wrote to Steels in a Jan. 18 letter provided to Brunswick News.

Steels had initially been cautiously optimistic about the changes, but since then, she’s gone without updates on the matter, according to a string of emails provided to Brunswick News.

I care enough to see it through because it is my mother.

Susan Steels

In a Jan. 30 email, NANB lawyer Melissa Everett Withers stated Steels would be advised of “significant progress” in the case and would be asked to testify at a discipline committee hearing if required.

But in a March 12 email, Denise LeBlanc-Kwaw, then CEO and registrar of NANB, told Steels that as she was no longer the complainant and responsible for prosecuting the case under the new rules, she would “no longer obtain information related to the file until the process is complete and a decision is rendered by either the discipline committee or the fitness to practice committee.”

In response, Steels wrote back that this position was contradictory to what she had received from Everett Withers.

Brunswick News requested an interview with either Everett Withers or Kate Sheppard, interim CEO and registrar of NANB. The newspaper was told nobody was available for an interview Friday and was instead provided a statement.

In that statement, Sheppard declined to comment on Steels’s specific complaint “in order to protect the integrity of the process and to preserve the confidentiality of those involved.”

Under the new rules, Sheppard confirmed the NANB cannot share “details with the public or with the individual(s) who raised the complaint regarding how a matter may be progressing.” It will tell the person(s) who filed the complaint “if a hearing will take place and/or if their testimony will be required.”

“As always, the results of complaints resolved by (an alternate complaint resolution process) or concluded by hearing are made public, and under the new rules of procedure, discipline committee hearings themselves are also public, which is again keeping with best regulatory practices in Canada,” Sheppard said in her statement.

In her complaint, Steels alleges the nurse in question breached several sections of the college’s standards of practice for registered nurses that govern resident care, communication and confidentiality.

Steels had been preparing last fall to serve as the prosecutor at the nurse’s discipline hearing when she learned of the changes to the rules of procedure.

“I had all the records set up for the hearing,” she recalled. “Then I started recruiting expert witnesses and I had two families willing to speak and testify.”

That work now sits in file boxes, but she doesn’t plan to give up her fight to see the nurse in question held accountable for her actions in her mother’s case.

“I care enough to see it through because it is my mother.”