List of new complaints filed against former Nunavut nurse

Lawyers for Deborah McKeown and the Registered Nursing Association of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are now scheduling a special chambers session with a Nunavut judge to decide whether a set of new allegations against McKeown, a former Nunavut nurse, should proceed. (FILE PHOTO)

Nunavut’s nursing college is investigating 19 new allegations that former nurse Deborah McKeown posed a risk to the public’s health, the Nunavut Civil Court of Justice in Iqaluit heard July 12.

Those allegations, which are not proven and are currently under investigation by the Registered Nursing Association of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, span McKeown’s nursing career in the Baffin region between 2011 and 2012, Justice Paul Bychok heard from lawyers.

The specifics of those allegations were not revealed in court July 12.

But these allegations are different than the 19 complaints made to the college against McKeown by her co-workers in 2011 and 2012, McKeown’s lawyer Austin Marshall told Bychok via teleconference.

“They’re not identical, but they’re from the same time period,” Marshall said from Yellowknife.

McKeown is connected to a series of events that involved the death of a three-month-old infant in Cape Dorset in 2012.

McKeown broke a number of Government of Nunavut nursing policies on the night the baby died, an external review of the baby’s death found.

In the wake of the death, and in response to the first set of complaints made against McKeown’s nursing practice, the nursing body put temporary restrictions on McKeown’s nursing license.

Those restrictions were lifted in June 2013 once McKeown completed a series of courses prescribed by the college.

Since then, McKeown’s lawyer has opened at least two separate civil files on behalf of his client against the nursing college.

The first file, opened in January 2015, alleges that the nursing body erroneously punished McKeown twice for the same set of complaints.

Marshall said July 7 that he was led to believe that the college had laid all their allegations on the table during the last court appearance for that civil matter in March.

But the college filed 19 new allegations against McKeown stemming from the same time period and as a result, Marshall then began a second separate civil proceeding against the college for those new allegations.

“They already had a crack at Ms. McKeown, now they’re back for a third and fourth time… My client’s career is being ruined, her health is being ruined,” Marshall told Bychok July 7.

So Marshall said he is asking the Nunavut court to quash these allegations.

But the nursing body’s lawyer, Adrian Wright, told Bychok that the college’s executive director is obligated to begin an investigation if evidence comes to light that the public’s health was put at risk by a practising nurse.

These are allegations that the self-governing nursing body must, by law, investigate, Wright said.

Therefore, Marshall’s request is premature, Wright argued. Nunavut courts do not have the jurisdiction to override the nursing college’s process.

But Bychok said Marshall raises serious issues including that the college filed these new allegations in “bad faith.” They should “be fully aired in court,” the judge added.

That airing will be scheduled later this week as part of a special chambers session, Bychok said.

Meanwhile, court documents show McKeown tried in 2015 and again this year to reinstate her Nunavut nursing license.

According to the nursing college, McKeown failed in both bids to register.

Court documents show that McKeown asked the GN for a reference for her 2016 application, but it is unclear if the GN gave McKeown that reference.