Former Nunavut nurse vows to go to court to protect his career

A former Nunavut nurse who's fighting to save his career says he will take that battle to the Nunavut Court of Justice if necessary.

Willy Tchuilen Ngatcha was the subject of a weeklong hearing into allegations he lacks the competence to work in the territory's remote communities.

The rare hearing, held last week in Yellowknife, was overseen by a board of inquiry appointed by the Registered Nurses Association of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

"I am very, very determined to go everywhere to make the truth triumph," said Tchuilen Ngatcha.

"If they approve the complaint, I will have no choice but to go forward with that, in front of the Supreme Court of Nunavut."

After being hired by the Nunavut Health Department in late 2016, Tchuilen Ngatcha was posted to the Whale Cove health centre on Dec. 22.

At the hearing, nurses who worked with him there testified that he lacked basic nursing skills, such as being able to insert an intravenous or do a neurological assessment.​

Tchuilen Ngatcha maintains the complaints against him are the result of a conspiracy. He said the nurses who complained about his competence — who were employed by an agency that supplies nurses to the Nunavut government — wanted him gone because having a Government of Nunavut employee at the health centre meant there was one less spot for the agency to fill.

During the hearing, Tchuilen Ngatcha put that theory to one of the nurses he worked with.

"If I say to you your action against me was to protect the [agency's] contract, what would you say to that?" he asked Tricia Quant.

"I'd say it's false," said Quant, noting that she took only one other contract in Nunavut after her stint at Whale Cove.

'I have no hard feelings, Willy'

The nurses similarly refuted Tchuilen Ngatcha's contention that they were discriminating against him based on his race (he is black) or his gender or his greater fluency in French.

"I have no hard feelings, Willy," said nurse Cheri Shusheski.

"I just thought your assessment skills were not strong enough. I didn't feel there was any discrimination at all. I think [head nurse] Joanne [Gerrard] restricted the things you were allowed to do based on safety issues."

Soon after concerns arose, the association confirmed Tchuilen Ngatcha had graduated from the University of Ottawa with a nursing degree in 2012. It also confirmed he had written and passed an admission exam to practise nursing in Quebec.

At the hearing, Tchuilen Ngatcha argued that he was was set up to fail by not being given an orientation period or mentoring from other more experienced nurses.

Nurses who testified at the hearing said their orientation at remote stations consisted of being shown who to call to book medevacs, ordering of medication and other operational issues. They said nursing skills were not a part of their orientations.

Only one without a lawyer

The nurses association suspended Tchuilen Ngatcha's licence to work as a nurse on Feb. 24, 2017, before the complaint against him had been investigated.

It said it did so to protect the public. It alerted nursing associations in Quebec and Ontario, where Tchuilen Ngatcha was also licensed, of its decision.

Tchuilen Ngatcha said, as a result, he could not afford a lawyer for his hearing. The board of inquiry and the nurses association were each represented by lawyers, though when disputes arose, the board members who presided over the hearing relied mainly on the association's lawyer, who was arguing for the complaint to be upheld.

Not only did Tchuilen Ngatcha have to represent himself, he had to do it in English, his second language.

"I said to them that my first language is French," he said. "I would be happy to give my testimony in French because I'm more fluent in French."

Though Tchuilen Ngatcha's hearing was open to the public, the nurses association would not allow the public to see any of the documents that were referenced, including the report of the investigator who looked into the complaint.

The head of discipline for the association said disciplinary hearings are rare — held only about once every four years. The decisions that result from those hearings are not easy to find.

Unlike counterparts in the provinces, whose websites can be easily searched for disciplinary decisions, the only place that N.W.T. and Nunavut decisions are recorded is in quarterly newsletters published by the association.

There is no indication of when the board of inquiry will reach a decision in Tchuilen Ngatcha's case.