Winnipeg Free Press: Nurse suspended after snooping on patients

A Manitoba nurse has been suspended and fined after admitting to snooping through the personal health information of patients — the latest in a series of privacy breaches affecting thousands in recent years.

A review of discipline reports released by the College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba revealed at least four other nurses have been punished for improperly accessing health information since 2018.

Collectively, the privacy violations have impacted as many as 2,140 patients.

“If I were part of the leadership of the (college), I would be alarmed,” said Arthur Schafer, former director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. “This is a crisis situation where one of the most fundamental principles of nursing ethics is being violated frequently, endangering patient privacy and endangering the basic values of health-care ethics.”

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