An auxiliary nurse at Sainte-Justine Hospital who searched 863 personal files without authorization on more than 7,000 occasions received a four-month disbarment.
“It is important to send a clear message to the entire profession that such conduct cannot be tolerated,” we can read in the judgment of the Disciplinary Council of the Order of Auxiliary Nurses of Quebec (OIIAQ ), delivered a little before Christmas.
Audrey Gauthier-Savignac notably consulted the files of a public figure and her child, as well as those of seven colleagues and their children, among others.
Widespread practice
The latter stressed before the Council that “unjustified access to files constitutes a widespread practice among professionals.”
The alleged facts date back from October 2017 to March 2020, when Mme Gauthier-Savignac had been granted access to the Chartmaxx software and she gave her name to become a “super-user”.
But the professional, then aged 28, began browsing personal files “sometimes in connection with this task of super-user and sometimes out of simple personal curiosity”.
According to the judgment, she consulted files by typing in dates of birth at random. She searched 863 files without justification, totaling 7,306 consultations.
Lack of judgment
The practical nurse stated that she honestly believed that she was not committing an offense, since she was not sharing the contents of the files with others. She did not derive any financial benefit from it, according to the decision.
The Disciplinary Council, however, saw a “blatant lack of judgment”.
Audrey Gauthier-Savignac was suspended with pay in 2021 by the CHU Sainte-Justine, for investigation purposes. She was then fired, but she now has a job at the CISSS des Laurentides.
She is the second Sainte-Justine employee to be singled out by her professional order for having consulted files without authorization. A nurse also poked her nose into the confidential information of 72 patients for whom she was not responsible.