It was a contentious day of cross examination at the public inquiry into long-term care homes.
Anne Coghlan, executive director of the College of Nurses of Ontario, was once again on the stand, but this time she was answering questions from the lawyer for Caressant Care in Woodstock.
David Golden noted that in 2014, the same year Elizabeth Wettlaufer was fired, the college was looking to streamline processes to deal with reports.
“To use layman’s language, you were trying to speed up the time it takes to deal with these reports, isn’t that fair?”
“I don’t know if speeding up was the objective. The objective was to assess and determine the most effective way to deal with the volume that we had,” Coghlan answered.
Coghlan previously suggested that Caressant Care in Woodstock and Meadow Park in London should have given more information to the college, but Golden said the college had had known Elizabeth Wettlaufer was an alcoholic since 1995.
He asked Coghlan why that information wasn’t considered when Wettlaufer was fired from Caressant Care in 2014; the college appealed her dismissal and later reached a settlement with the home.
“There was nothing in the current report that suggested that there was any indication of an alcohol problem,” she said.
“Ms. Coghlan, there’s a detailed description in this document of the prior, and…” Golden responded before Coghlan continued.
“I agree with the prior, I’m talking about the incidents.”
“But that is part of your assessment of risk, is it not — is reviewing the prior?” Golden rebutted.
Coghlan stated that experts deemed Wettlaufer fit to practice in 1996 or 1997 and so the college deemed the matter concluded.
“Since that time, the college had no additional information or any indication that there was a problem with either drugs or alcohol.”
The inquiry was launched in hopes of finding out how Wettlaufer was able to kill 8 patients and attempt to murder 4 others in her care with overdoses of insulin over the course of roughly a decade.