An assistant nurse at Sainte-Justine Hospital who conducted unauthorized searches of 863 personnel files more than 7,000 times has been banned from practicing for four months.
“It is important to send a clear message to the entire profession that such behavior cannot be tolerated,” said the ruling of the disciplinary council of the Order of Auxiliary Nurses of Quebec (OIIAQ), announced just before Christmas.
In particular, Audrey Gauthier-Savignac viewed the files of a public figure and her child, as well as, among others, those of seven colleagues and their children.
Widespread practice
He emphasized to the Council that “unjustified access to files is a widespread practice among professionals”.
The alleged facts date from October 2017 to March 2020, when Ms. Gauthier-Savignac gained access to the Chartmaxx software and provided her name as a “superuser.”
But the then 28-year-old professional began searching through personal files, “sometimes in the context of this superuser role and sometimes out of simple personal curiosity.”
According to the verdict, she consulted files by randomly typing birth dates.
7306 views
She searched 863 files without authorization, a total of 7,306 consultations.
Lack of judgment
The practical nurse stated that she honestly believed that she was not committing a crime because she did not share the contents of the files with others. The decision states that she received no financial benefit from this.
However, the disciplinary board saw a “blatant lack of judgment”.
Audrey Gauthier-Savignac was suspended with pay from the CHU Sainte-Justine in 2021 for investigation purposes. She was subsequently fired, but now has a job at the CISSS des Laurentides.
She is the second Sainte-Justine employee to be convicted of unauthorized access to files under her professional disposition. A nurse also poked her nose into the confidential information of 72 patients for which she was not responsible.
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