The nurse, the MLA, the letters and the witnesses

Fort Resolution resident Priscilla Lafferty describes herself as no fan of either Richard Edjericon or Jennifer Patterson.

This is the third in a series of articles examining a campaign led by Edjericon, the community’s MLA, to have nurse-in-charge Patterson fired from the Fort Resolution health centre.

Part one assessed existing tensions at the health centre. Part two showed the impact behind the scenes of news coverage, in part steered by Edjericon, who ended 2022 by writing to the NWT’s health authority and calling for Patterson to be sacked.

Edjericon’s allegations centred on racism. Investigators ultimately said they could not substantiate any allegations against Patterson, who never returned to Fort Resolution, and the MLA received a fine and reprimand for his conduct.

This third installment in the series looks at the process behind that investigation’s findings – why the health authority decided to investigate Patterson following Edjericon’s allegations and how that investigation unfolded – with the help of internal documents alongside interviews with residents and healthcare workers.

Lafferty, who lost an unrelated court case against Edjericon, believes the campaign to remove Patterson was mostly comprised of hearsay. “He and I do not see eye to eye,” she said of the Tu Nedhé-Wiilideh MLA.

Even so, Lafferty holds Patterson responsible for an approach to care that she thinks failed the community. (Patterson told Cabin Radio she is technically still a GNWT employee while a labour arbitration process continues, and as such is unable to defend herself by publicly commenting on Lafferty’s allegations.)

Lafferty alleged her interactions with Patterson included trouble accessing medication and difficulties persuading the health centre to assess a relative who she described as being “so sick he couldn’t even get up.”

She described Patterson on multiple occasions refusing to leave the health centre to help patients having medical crises at home.

Colleagues of Patterson – who reject the suggestion that she was racist in any of her work – have told Cabin Radio she followed health authority policies to the letter, including a policy forbidding nurses from leaving the health centre to attend emergencies.

Interviewed earlier this month, Lafferty said she didn’t know such a policy existed. Asked by Cabin Radio if knowledge of that policy changed her impression of Patterson, she said: “No, it doesn’t make a difference to me.”

To Lafferty, Patterson’s approach contributed to the deaths of two of her uncles. “It could have been prevented if she had just taken care of them,” she said.

Allegations related to deaths in Fort Resolution were examined as part of an investigation into Patterson that was just starting as 2022 turned into 2023. Patterson denied any wrongdoing and said she had not been involved in those tragedies, and the investigators reported no evidence to the contrary.

Throughout this case, health authority bosses, investigators and eventually a labour arbitrator all faced the same question: what was actually happening in Fort Resolution?

None of those people were in the health centre when any alleged racism or poor-quality care occurred.

For the most part, only the patient and the healthcare worker truly know what happens between them on any given day – and each may have a completely different recollection of the same interaction.

“You don’t do an assessment of a person with an open door. Another person isn’t in the room,” said Barbara Bryant, a 70-year-old nurse with more than two decades’ experience in the Northwest Territories who has also practised in Fort Resolution.

“When something happens, it’s one person’s word against another’s.”

This article examines how the health authority and investigators responded when Edjericon sent a late 2022 package of letters appearing to be from community leaders, alleging racism at the health centre and calling for Patterson to go.

‘Just a witch hunt’

On December 2, 2022, a week after Edjericon wrote to the health authority, Jennifer Patterson was suspended with pay pending an investigation.

That move shocked other nurses. Some who spoke with Cabin Radio said the investigation appeared to skip multiple steps in the normal disciplinary process and did not align with any stated policy.

“They got these letters and then they just removed her very quickly from her role and got these third-party investigators. I don’t think there was any support,” said Brody McGee, who shared the nurse-in-charge role with Patterson. They each worked the job for six weeks at a time before rotating out of the community, with a small amount of overlap.

“I’m surprised that in today’s day and age, an employer can do what they did,” said McGee.

“That was just a witch hunt. There was nothing, no basis to any of these claims.”

Two healthcare workers with knowledge of events at the health centre pointed to one of the labour arbitrator’s remarks: that the evidence suggested Patterson had “undertaken some performance management of an Indigenous staff member closely connected to Mr Edjericon” just before the MLA began his campaign. (Edjericon declined to comment on the arbitrator’s report “out of respect for the parties involved in the application before the labour board.”)

“A lot of the people who came after Jen were relatives” of that employee, one worker alleged, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive details related to the case.

“She started calling people to account for their behaviour,” the worker continued.

“I don’t know how the employer could not have understood what was happening. Jen talked to them multiple times a week and the RL6 process” – RL6 is the name of a form used to document incidents at the health centre – “requires upper management review. Maybe they were not reviewing documents and not listening to Jen. I don’t know how they could not have known.”

In the view of six healthcare workers who spoke with Cabin Radio, the health authority’s decision overlooked the lack of prior evidence of misconduct on Patterson’s behalf – and the near-daily record nurses kept of what they considered to be abuse and harassment of staff.

That mattered, they said, because some residents ended up with an inaccurate picture of what was happening. They thought Patterson had been removed from the job because she had been found blameworthy, a rumour that text messages in the labour arbitrator’s report show spreading through Fort Resolution.

A message quoted in the report stated: “The Fort Resolution Health Centre Head Nurse is under investigation by external investigator. The investigator will interview all staff and community members in January 2023 then he’ll submit his final report. Jennifer Peterson has been released from her duties effective 5:00 p.m. December 2nd 2022.” (Patterson’s last name was misspelled in the message.)

After being shown that text message, Patterson wrote to Lori-Anne Danielson, then the health authority’s chief operating officer.

In an email dated December 8, 2022, Patterson pointed to the text message and observed that in her view, “the confidentiality part of this process” appeared to apply only to Patterson. She asked what steps were being taken to protect her as an employee.

One healthcare worker who spoke with Cabin Radio concluded: “The employer failed the nurses and failed Jen in particular, 100 percent.”

“It affected how I did my job,” said McGee.

“It’s scary. I had my family with me in the community. Who’s next? Do I piss off the wrong person and then it’s a series of letters and I’m gone?”

The health authority says it suspended Patterson because that seemed like the right thing to do.

Danielson told the labour arbitrator that, given past tensions in the community, the allegations presented by Edjericon meant the health authority should take a “fulsome relook at what was happening.”

She testified that while many concerns were documented in earlier news reports and had already been investigated, the “best way to handle the situation was to give ourselves time to complete an investigation and to not have Jennifer in the community at the time.”

Danielson told the arbitrator that allegations of racism from a nurse-in-charge and concerns about inadequate care were “quite concerning” given Fort Resolution’s 500 residents are almost 90-percent Indigenous. She noted Patterson had “also raised concerns” about the treatment of staff by some community members, the arbitrator’s report states.

Danielson said the health authority “wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on” and be sure the nurse-in-charge “wasn’t being racist” and “was providing fair and equitable care.”

In an internal email, Danielson describes to a colleague a phone call with Patterson in which she “tried to keep to the script” after informing her of the suspension.

Danielson quoted Patterson as saying: “I knew they were gunning for me. That community. Damn them. Kick a person when they are down. Now I have no home. They stabbed me in the back.”

An investigation begins

The GNWT decided to farm out the investigation to an independent law firm to build trust in the outcome. The territory retained Christopher Buchanan and Marie Pier-Leduc of law firm McLennan Ross.

Because the concerns raised in Edjericon’s package of letters were “general in nature,” Danielson said later, the health authority decided to “give latitude” to the lawyers and provided broad terms of reference for the investigation. (Only one of the letters contained an allegation against Patterson related to a specific event, the arbitrator later concluded, and that allegation was about an event at which the investigation found Patterson had not been present.)

Initially, MLA Edjericon helped to contact witnesses and arrange interviews for the investigation, even going as far as to arrange accommodation in Fort Resolution for the lawyers.

Danielson said she intervened to stop this as soon as she learned it was happening and also provided the names of other people for the lawyers to contact, beyond those suggested by Edjericon.

One was the chief of the Fort Resolution-based Deninu Kųę́ First Nation, Louis Balsillie, who had been supportive of Patterson throughout her time in the community and had not filed a letter as part of Edjericon’s package sent to the health authority.

Reached briefly by phone this month, Balsillie told Cabin Radio: “I respected her.”

Patterson was also interviewed by investigators, twice. The first, a six-hour interview, included questions related to at least three deaths in the community. Patterson said two did not involve her and the third had been, in the arbitrator’s words, “entirely anticipated.”

Many of the people interviewed were those Edjericon had selected. Two healthcare workers even recalled a form of town-hall meeting being convened at which – they were later told by residents – attendees were asked to raise any concerns they had. (This meeting is not noted in the arbitrator’s report. Who might have arranged it is not clear.)

After the MLA was interviewed by investigators, he sent an email to the health authority saying the interview had felt “unethical” and “unprofessional.”

To “avoid a judicial review,” Edjericon told the health authority, changes needed to be made to the investigation. He recommended an oversight committee, a different lawyer and the hiring of a Chipewyan interpreter.

He also included a list of 21 people that he said should be interviewed as part of the investigation.

Danielson did not act on the first three recommendations but sent the list of 21 new witnesses to the lawyers and told them: “Please start working on the interviews.”

On learning the health authority had accepted Edjericon’s list, Patterson’s union representative told the investigators he believed this would compromise the investigation even as the lawyers insisted they would keep an open mind.

In an attempt to be fair, Patterson was also contacted and asked if she would like anyone else to be interviewed.

“Since I have no idea what allegation will come out of these latest interviews, I’m finding it difficult to determine what, if any, further witnesses are required for my defence. Will I be provided with the opportunity to respond to any allegations from these interviews?” Patterson asked in response.

“I have considered providing some community members as witnesses. However, given the current tone in Fort Resolution, my concern is the very real potential for repercussions against them for coming to my defense. I continue to receive information from within the community and from other regions in the NWT, that indicates the process and interviews, etc. are being freely discussed. It appears that any attempts to safeguard my privacy and the confidentiality of this process have been completely ineffective.”

By the end of the investigation in February 2023, 27 witnesses had been interviewed, including one who the lawyers said had threatened to physically harm Patterson if she returned to Fort Resolution.

After interviewing Patterson for the second time, lawyer Buchanan wrote to Danielson at the health authority: “Jennifer is never returning to Fort Resolution. I don’t know if she is planning on resigning or going on leave. But she made it clear she is done.”

Patterson is cleared on all counts

The 1,052-page investigation report (including appendices) was produced on February 21, 2023. It concluded that all allegations against Patterson were unsubstantiated.

Specifically, investigators said there was nothing to support allegations that Patterson had been:

• racist toward people in the community;
• unwilling to work with residents or local leaders, or working in isolation;
• refusing to see patients or sending them home undiagnosed;
• deliberately cancelling appointments or denying medical travel;
• putting community members at risk;
• rude and disrespectful toward health centre employees or the public; or
• belittling or condescending toward Elders and relatives.

Moreover, the investigators “went so far as to praise [Patterson] for her professionalism, noting the verbal abuse and aggressive behaviour health centre staff were subjected to by patients on a regular basis,” the labour arbitrator later wrote.

The two lawyers found the root cause of the tension to be a lack of local understanding about health authority policies related to triage, home visits, medevacs, medical travel and after-hours calls.

And in a bombshell of a conclusion, the lawyers said MLA Edjericon was the actual author of letters alleging racism and mistreatment by Patterson that appeared to have come from the president of the local Métis council and the hamlet’s mayor.

The investigators said he had “falsely orchestrat[ed] a scenario of community leadership wanting something done about Ms Patterson” to help his campaign to have her fired.

Edjericon was fined $2,500 a year later and reprimanded by his legislative colleagues after an integrity commissioner concluded his actions regarding Patterson broke the MLAs’ code of conduct.

“The Legislative Assembly has dealt with the findings of the integrity commissioner and that process speaks for itself, including my acceptance of the findings and public apology,” Edjericon wrote when approached for comment late last month.

Records at the time do not show Edjericon making a public apology. He accepted the integrity commissioner’s findings but expressly said he did not accept the conclusions of the investigation into Patterson’s conduct.

In a statement on October 11, 2024, the MLA said he had “no reason to believe anything I was told was inaccurate or incomplete.”

“I did not, and do not, accept the findings of the investigation into health services in Fort Resolution,” he wrote.

The arbitrator’s report notes he used a January 10, 2023 email to retract a statement he made during his interview that he had authored the complaint letters signed by other community leaders, “explaining that he had ‘misunderstood’ the question due to his hearing disability, and that he ‘had no hand in writing any letters.'”

The Union of Northern Workers, meanwhile, submitted a letter asserting: “The Mayor of Fort Resolution confirmed in his interview with the investigators that he merely signed the letter that was drafted by the MLA and actually supported Ms Patterson and spoke highly of her work in and with the community.”

A full, unredacted copy of the investigation report has not been made public and was not available for this reporting.

Union files grievance

Patterson briefly tried to work elsewhere in the NWT but soon left the territory.

Her reputation had been “smeared all over the territory,” she told the labour arbitrator, and her character had been defamed.

Patterson “testified that she had thought her employer ‘had [her] back’ but instead found that it was OK with using her for ‘political gain’ even though she did absolutely nothing to warrant this,” the arbitrator’s report states.

She “expressed that she was particularly upset with the employer’s silence when she was threatened, and with the fact that no one reached out to her to see if she was OK during the lengthy investigation.”

The investigation was “an abuse, working around the disciplinary process that’s supposed to protect your workers,” said McGee, the nurse-in-charge who shared the role with Patterson.

He believes health authority bosses like Danielson, who find themselves sometimes handling matters at a political level, let politics “taint the whole process” in this instance. (The health authority responded to a request for comment on Danielson’s behalf, saying managers had acquired “valuable perspective and several important lessons” from this case.)

“They chose to throw Jen under the bus for what I felt was political gain, which is super inappropriate,” McGee told Cabin Radio.

“It is a huge part of why I didn’t want to work there any more.”

“Jennifer was always on the side of the person that was struggling. Always, it didn’t matter what community,” said Bryant, the veteran nurse. (Bryant spoke on the record, adding: “I don’t want to seem like I don’t have a backbone. Something has to change, it really does.”)

“It just got progressively worse there and I really worried about her being there. And then it just blew up,” she said.

After Patterson left, Bryant said she was approached by McGee to return to Fort Resolution.

“Brody, I am not going back to Fort Resolution if I can’t safely go for a walk. If I don’t feel safe, how can I possibly see these people?” she recalled telling him.

“I want you to get your family out of there while you’re all safe.”

In March 2023, the Union of Northern Workers filed a grievance alleging the health authority had broken no fewer than 10 articles of the GNWT’s collective agreement in its treatment of Patterson.

Our next article in the series will examine how the arbitrator assessed the health authority’s actions – and how the health authority and current health minister say they are responding to the arbitrator’s conclusions.

The series will conclude with a look at whether the territory can learn broader lessons.