The fiasco of the admission exam to the Order of Nurses of Quebec (OIIQ) could cost millions of dollars in lost remuneration and damages if the Office des professions du Québec confirms that hundreds of candidates were bullied. Their union intends to fight for them to be compensated.
In an interview with The Canadian Press, the president of the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ), Julie Bouchard, confirmed that the union’s legal resources are currently evaluating possible recourse. It wants its members to recover the sums lost in salary and social benefits, in addition to raising possible moral damages.
“Our legal sector is looking at how far we can go because it is unacceptable,” says M.me Bouchard, who emphasizes the psychological repercussions of a mention of failure.
“Anxiety is rising [chez les] candidates for the nursing profession who are afraid of taking the exam and wondering: how many failures will I have? Does this mean I should change my career path? » she continues.
In a press release published Thursday morning, the union, which says it has more than 80,000 members, warns that it will “vigilantly defend their rights”.
According to information provided by the FIQ, a candidate for the nursing profession earns $23.49 per hour. After obtaining her practice license, the candidate sees her rate increase to $25.81 at the first level. If, however, she has clinician status, the rate rises to $27.08.
It is therefore a shortfall of $2.32 to $3.59, multiplied by thousands of hours of work, including a large number of overtime hours, that the union is preparing to claim. But to whom?
The FIQ admits that it still questions responsibility in this matter. Who should pay? Health establishments employ nurses, but they pay remuneration according to the status determined by the Order.
According to legal experts consulted by The Canadian Press, recourse against the employer seems unlikely. The most interesting route in this matter would be that of a class action or a civil liability suit against the OIIQ.
The union could apply to the Superior Court to initiate a collective action as a legal entity, on behalf of its members. But the bar is high when attacking a professional order, since article 193 of the Professional Code grants them a form of immunity. The objective is to allow them to freely play their role as protectors of the public, assuming their good faith. However, some of the experts consulted believe that the actions criticized by the Order could open the door to a challenge to this immunity.
At the FIQ, president Julie Bouchard is also against the Office of Professions. In his eyes, this “watchdog” should have acted much more quickly “to avoid this chaos”.
In the government camp, we prefer not to comment on the possibility of having to compensate nurses. In the office of the President of the Treasury Board, Sonia LeBel, we want to “let the expert appointed by the Office do his work”, but we maintain that “the Order must take its responsibilities and follow the recommendations of the commissioner [à l’admission aux professions] “.
For almost a year, the commissioner has been investigating the high failure rate for the OIIQ professional exam. In a third progress report unveiled this week, it concludes that hundreds of candidates for the practice of nursing have failed due to “unjustified” manipulation of the pass mark.
Its work also identified significant methodological flaws in the design of the examination as well as in the calculation of the results. Shortcomings so serious that it called into question the reliability and validity of the tool.
In response, the Office des professions du Québec decreed a form of supervision by imposing on the OIIQ an independent specialist whose mandate is to ensure that the commissioner’s recommendations are applied. He will also have to recalculate the results of the September 2022, March 2023 and September 2023 exams.
Delay in results
Due to the intervention of the Office des professions, the OIIQ has also indicated that additional time will be necessary to know the results of last month’s exam. Instead of the usual six weeks, the wait could last a little more than two months when we should know the results in November.
Once again, the FIQ deplored these delays. The union maintains that candidates who chose to take the exam again could be “harmed twice rather than once”.
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