Medical professional misconduct scandals in Nova Scotia

Medical scandals at the only medical school in the Maritimes, Dalhousie University, have been an issue since at least 2002. Despite claims of established offices to address the issues, problems persist to the present day in 2024. Multiple healthcare providers who have trained at Dalhousie University have left due to an ongoing culture of discrimination, bullying, and harassment.

The Nova Scotia Health Authority has also faced a number of healthcare-related scandals, including privacy breaches that have led to class-action lawsuits and deaths in ER waiting rooms.

Dalhousie University Medical Culture Scandals

Dentistry - Dalhousie University

The most infamous scandal within Dalhousie University was the Dalhousie Dentistry Gentlemen's Club that went viral nationwide in 2015. This involved a Facebook group in which male students of the dentistry school were writing misogynistic and homophobic comments about female classmates and women in general, and promoting rape culture. There were unproven allegations that the men involved were a part of a secret rape club, given that some of the comments in the Facebook group included men sharing a desire to chloroform and rape attractive colleagues. All 13 dentistry students involved in the group were suspended. Despite calls for the students to be publicly named, they were not, particularly after claims of suicidal ideation and self-harm from the young men once they were caught. A restorative justice process was initiated, which the female dentistry students shared they felt they were being forced into, as they expressed feeling silenced, isolated, and discouraged from proceeding formally. Despite these concerns, the restorative justice process proceeded, concluded, and 12 of the 13 men involved in the Gentlemen's Club group graduated. Dalhousie had spent $681,875 of taxpayer and student money on the scandal, with $380,327 toward public relations and $118,448 to external legal fees outside of paid internal legal staff.

A welcome sign in Nova Scotia

A case of workplace bullying in Atlantic Canada involved Dr. Gabrielle Horne. She was conducting research at Dalhousie University when older male colleagues demanded to receive undue credit on her research. When she refused, she was bullied out of her work, as the Nova Scotia Health Authority revoked Dr. Horne's clinical privileges. What ensued was a 14-year legal battle ending in 2016. She ultimately won a lawsuit worth $1.4 million from the health authority for damages to reputation and career. However, the health authority appealed the decision and had it reduced to $800,000. The Nova Scotia government spent at least another $1 million of taxpayer money on legal fees in the Dr. Horne case. Dr. Horne shared that the health authority never once apologized to her for actions that were deemed to be "in bad faith" when she was falsely accused of being a risk to patient care and had her hospital privileges revoked after she stood up to senior colleagues.

A public inquiry took place into the mistreatment of Dr. Horne as well as Dr. Michael Goodyear and Dr. Bassam A. Nassar, all three of which did research for Dalhousie University while working for the Nova Scotia Health Authority. The report found that all three doctors were mistreated by both the Nova Scotia Health Authority and Dalhousie University. Their cases took several years until all were exonerated. Dr. Goodyear had to declare bankruptcy due to being banned from his work as an oncologist, however he received a settlement from the health authority with a confidentiality clause that prevented him from discussing the details. Despite that report containing a recommendation for providing justice and closure to all 3 physicians, Dr. Horne's article in The Globe & Mail indicates that she still has never received an apology from those who persecuted her.

Queen Elizabeth II Hospital

The health authority claimed to be committed to creating a "safe and harassment-free work environment" and initiated a respectful workplace policy in 2017. Despite the lengthy legal case of Dr. Horne, and the recommendations from the public inquiry to improve the culture within the health authority, further allegations of a toxic workplace later made headlines in 2022. Dr. Mohammed Al-Mansob arrived in Halifax hoping to make it his permanent home after his medical training. Instead, he complained that he experienced "racism, discrimination, double standards, disrespect and division" from both Nova Scotia Health and Dalhousie University's medical school. He described receiving fewer opportunities in the workplace, being held to different standards, "facing accusations of bad behaviour without evidence, and a lack of action from leadership". He ended up leaving the province to continue his fellowship training in Toronto. Dr. Mohamed Othman reported similar experiences of toxicity, stating, "It was like a circus." Dr. Ahmed Al Lawati further described passive-aggressiveness and microaggressions in the workplace, and pointed out that those persecuting him were smart enough to never abuse him in front of other people. He was placed on academic probation after he was frequently forced to be evaluated by the same people who were targeting him. He started to look at alternative options and moved to Hamilton, Ontario. In response to these three claims of systematic racism, Dalhousie University's medical school declined to be interviewed by CBC and instead sent a statement claiming to take all incidents of mistreatment very seriously. The health authority later claimed the problems were fixed, while also shutting down their cardiac surgery fellowship program.

In January 2023, Dalhousie announced that they had launched a new Office of Professional Affairs to manage complaints of mistreatment. The new office was in development for over 2 years after a report by the university's senate review committee revealed that numerous (1 in 5) medical trainees had faced harassment, discrimination, and bullying in their learning and working environment. There were no public comments made about why the existing Human Rights and Equity Services Office, or the existing Offices of Medical Student Affairs and Resident Affairs, or the 2019-established Office for Equity and Inclusion, were not already adequately addressing discrimination and harassment within the university. The university has not publicly explained what a 5th office, the Office of Professional Affairs, would achieve that should not have already been achieved by four existing offices.

Later in 2023, a newly published peer-reviewed research article found that "mistreatment of medical residents in the Maritimes remains common and underreported." Residents who had experienced mistreatment pointed out that the medical hierarchy enables mistreatment, and that many don't report incidents of mistreatment because of fears of retaliation. The university again fell back on their 5th created office to address mistreatment, the Office of Professional Affairs, to claim the problems were being addressed. They claim that the university can remove a problematic faculty member from teaching, asserting that teaching medical trainees is a privilege and not a right. However, no information or statistics has yet been published to indicate that the Office of Professional Affairs is achieving anything further that the 4 previously existing offices had apparently failed to address.

Problems with harassment within medical culture at Dalhousie University continue to the present day, as the university announced in June 2024 that they had pulled all medical students and post-graduate residency trainees from any cardiac training at some New Brunswick sites of the university. The reasons given were again behaviours related to intimidation, harassment, and discrimination.

Nova Scotia Health Authority Scandals

Nova Scotia has been subject to multiple serious medical mistakes on a recurring basis, leading to the creation of a government registry where these mistakes are listed. For example, one woman had her breast removed even though she did not have breast cancer, because of a biopsy mix-up with the true patient with cancer.

The Nova Scotia Health Authority has also been subject to multiple privacy breaches over several years, where multiple employees accessed the records of hundreds of patients whose care they were not involved in, such as family or colleagues, revealing a "dangerous and insidious culture of entitlement" to unauthorized viewing of private patient records and leading to a million-dollar class action lawsuit that the authority paid out in 2017. The lawyers involved with a subsequent 2024 proposed class action lawsuit allege that the health authority is negligent in preventing serial privacy breaches.

Indigenous leaders filed a lawsuit against Nova Scotia Health Authority radiologists for allegedly research on Indigenous people without consent. The lawsuit alleges a long history of oppression of Indigenous people within Canada, where they have been "subjected to medical treatment and research against their will and without their consent", leading Indigenous people to have a "historically and evidentiary based mistrust of the health-care system.”

Nova Scotia Health Authority has also had incidences of patients dying while waiting long hours for care in hospital ERs around the province.