Cape Dorset nurse back in court with nursing association

Lawyers representing the Registered Nursing Association of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and ex-Nunavut nurse Debbie McKeown were back in court May 19 in attempt to resolve disputes over what documents should be admitted in McKeown’s lawsuit against the nursing association. (FILE PHOTO)

Lawyers on either side of former Nunavut nurse Debbie McKeown’s court proceedings agreed in court May 19 to share documents.

Well, sort of.

Austin Marshall, representing McKeown, and Adrian Wright, representing the Registered Nursing Association of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, appeared before Justice Sue Cooper via teleconference at the Nunavut Court of Justice in Iqaluit with the “substance of a consent order” relating to those documents.

A consent order is a court document in which one lawyer agrees to release specific materials relevant to a court case to another lawyer, usually via the court record.

McKeown is at the centre of a health scandal that rocked the south Baffin community of Cape Dorset in 2012 and involved the death of a three-month old infant.

In a multi-media investigative story published last October, the CBC alleged McKeown refused to see the baby boy when his mother called after hours, contrary to Government of Nunavut policy.

McKeown’s application before the court does not directly relate to the night the baby died, but stems from complaints filed against her in February 2012 by a fellow nurse.

In a court application filed in January, McKeown alleged that the nursing association — an independent body responsible for licensing nurses and monitoring their best practice in NWT and Nunavut — disciplined her on two separate occasions for the same 2012 incident.

In doing so, the association overstepped its authority, McKeown’s lawyer alleged, and breached a duty of fairness to his client, now a former Cape Dorset nurse.

McKeown’s January application asked the Nunavut court to impose an injunction on the NWT-Nunavut RNA to prevent the association from looking any further into the complaint and “quashing all other proceedings taken in furtherance of the complaint.”

Paul Okalik, who became Nunavut’s health minister after the CBC story broke about the death of the Cape Dorset infant, announced Feb. 24 that the government would conduct an external review to determine what steps were taken after the infant’s death, and whether those steps were appropriate in the circumstances.

“[The external review] will not consider the cause of death or any conclusions of the Chief Coroner for Nunavut regarding this case,” Okalik said in the legislature in February.

The incident for which McKeown says she was twice disciplined by the nursing association occurred in February, 2012 — two months before the infant’s death.

For now, lawyers are still wrangling over document disclosure and the substance of McKeown’s case against the association has not yet been heard.

At this point, they have almost agreed on which documents are relevant and should be entered into the court record.

Wright told Justice Cooper May 19 he is concerned about medical records that Marshall, McKeown’s lawyer, is asking the nurses association to produce, since they contained confidential patient information.

Cooper said that for now, Wright should file the consent order with the court and that sensitive information could be redacted or sealed to protect the privacy of individuals named in the documents.

After filing the order, Cooper told both lawyers to communicate with the Nunavut court to set up a special session in judge’s chambers to debate what information should be protected and what should be made public.