An employee at Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) has been fired after it was learned that their credentials were fraudulent.
The employee worked at Kingston General Hospital (KGH) as a nurse for six months, from July 22 of last year until January 27.
KHSC sent out a release on Wednesday saying an investigation had been launched following the employee’s termination.
The hospital organization says it discovered the deceit by the individual, who has not been identified publicly, through a routine check with the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) where they were found not to be a Registered Nurse.
“This individual undertook significant efforts to fraudulently gain employment with KHSC including providing extensive forged documentation of their qualifications and credentials,” said Jason Hann, Executive Vice-President of Patient Care and Chief Nursing Executive.
“The fraudulent activity was identified through a routine, scheduled check with the CNO, that is completed for all nurses employed at KHSC and we quickly took action to end the individual’s employment.”
The individual worked primarily in the post surgical unit (Kidd 6) during their time at the hospital, but also worked some shifts on other units between Dec. 1, 2022 and Jan. 27, 2023 including the Admission and Transfer Unit (ATU), Connell 10, Kidd 9, Connell 9, Davies 5, Kidd 5, Kidd 4, Johnson 3, Kidd 3, and Connell 3.
It doesn’t appear that the hospital will be sharing the terminated employee’s identity, and it’s unclear whether the individual will be named by police or will face any charges.
Kingston Police did not return comment in time for publishing (though they are expected to investigate and any updates will be added to the article).
It’s also unclear at this time how the lack of registration with the CNO was not caught in the hiring process, and nurses can even be searched by name through the CNO’s website by anyone in order to confirm their registration.
Sandra Carlton, Executive Vice-President and Chief Human Resources Office, said that KHSC believes this is a one off, but will review it’s hiring and onboarding practices.
“We are in the process of reviewing our hiring and onboarding process to ensure there are not gaps in our systems that would allow for another incident to occur in the future,” said Carlton in the release.
“While we believe this is a truly unique scenario, we will use this as an opportunity to strengthen our processes to the fullest extent possible to ensure it will not happen again.”
The hospital organization says it will help in any way it can with any investigations by Kingston Police and CNO, but that the internal investigation would be focused on determining the impact on patients and their families, with the hospital currently in the process of contacting those families.
“We understand the stress and anxiety this news may cause for our patients and other KHSC staff. We will work directly with the impacted patients, families, and staff to address their concerns,” said Dr. David Pichora, President and CEO.
“We are committed to providing patients and their families with safe, high-quality care at all times and we are committed to speaking with each individual that reaches out to us using the contact information that has been provided to the patients who have been impacted.”
KHSC said there wasn’t an employee who at this time could speak to what motivated the individual to fake their credentials in order to work at the hospital, and that they themselves would likely be the only ones who could speak to it.
The release adds that if a patient has any concerns, they can contact KHSC’s Patient Relations team by email at patientrelations@kingstonhsc.ca or by phone at 613-549-6666 extension 4158.
