This instalment of You Make the Call features a registered nurse who was fired for poor behaviour at work.
Nida Beck is a registered nurse who worked for Hillside Pines Home for Special Care in Bridgewater, N.S., starting in 1992. Beck was considered good at her job, except for some issues with getting along with other employees at Hillside.
A 2001 performance evaluation gave her a negative review of her interaction with staff and listening skills. Beck responded that she was hurt by the comments and would think about how she could improve.
Over the next few years, Hillside continued to receive complaints from staff about her moodiness and conflicts with employees in positions beneath her. When this was addressed in her performance evaluations, Beck apologized but also tried to justify and explain why she acted in that way. She said she had “also been hurt myself” and claimed other employees made “insensitive and derogatory gestures” and comments and she “could no longer tolerate it.” She was also frustrated with increasing workloads.
Beck also felt frustrated from working on the night shift at Hillside, as she was the only registered nurse on duty, there was no administrative or housekeeping staff around, and patients with dementia or cognitive impairment often were more difficult at night. She was responsible for everything at Hillside overnight, including finding replacements for staff who called in sick.
Hillside had Beck attend workshops on interactions with co-workers, but it wasn’t satisfied with her improvement. On Jan. 15, 2013, Beck was suspended for three days without pay following three incidents:
• Beck told a volunteer without proper footwear to go home without giving her a chance to explain she had some in her car. Beck was told she should have spoken to the volunteer “privately and respectfully.”
• Beck told a staff member who was asked to come home immediately because of urgent medical test results that they were short-staffed. Beck was told she should apologize for not making the staff member “feel cared for at a time when she needed that.”
• Beck failed to follow Hillside policies on reporting work-related injuries.
A month after the suspension, Beck had an incident with a staff member over a resident’s missing medication. The staff member filed a complaint, leading to Beck being told she was bullying the staff member and any further “harassment or misconduct towards your peers, residents or visitors will result in termination of your employment.”
Upset, Beck tendered her resignation. Hillside asked her to reconsider as it wanted her to improve, not resign, so Beck withdrew her resignation.
In August 2014, a co-worker found Beck’s keys and “lightly tossed the keys” in front of Beck, but Beck claimed the co-worker threw the keys hard at her. She threw the keys back and filed an incident report. Hillside moved Beck to the day shift for monitoring and coaching.
On Oct. 30, a resident's wife complained that Beck told her she needed the doctor's permission before sending the resident to the hospital. The resident’s wife also filed a complaint with the Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness, but it determined there was no evidence the resident didn’t receive adequate medical care.
Hillside decided Beck’s behaviour problems were “cyclical” and weren’t changing, so it terminated her employment on Nov. 28.
You Make the Call
Was there just cause for dismissal?
OR
Was there insufficient cause for dismissal?
If you said there was insufficient cause for dismissal, you’re correct. The board found that in the incident Hillside used as a culminating incident, Beck was in “a demanding position on a demanding shift” with many things requiring her attention. Though Hillside policy didn’t require a doctor’s approval to send a resident to the hospital, Beck and other employees weren’t aware of it. In addition, the resident’s health wasn’t affected by his not being hospitalized. It wasn’t enough to justify termination of a 22-year employee with a good performance record, said the board.
As for Beck’s disciplinary history, it had more to do with Beck’s relations with other staff than her handling of resident care and their families and therefore unrelated to the culminating incident, said the board.
The board also found that when Hillside asked Beck to retract her resignation a year earlier, it essentially implied that prior conduct would not be used against her. It also damaged her future job prospects, as leaving because of a voluntary resignation would be much better on her record than being terminated for cause.
See Beck and Hillside Pines Home for Special Care Society, Re, 2016 CarswellNS 410 (N.S. Lab. Bd.).
