Wettlaufer was subject of complaints, allowed to go on working, inquiry hears
ST. THOMAS, Ont. — A nurse who killed elderly patients in her care was the subject of multiple complaints but was given a positive reference letter and went on working until she confessed her crimes, documents filed at a public inquiry examining her actions show.
The probe examining the circumstances that led to Elizabeth Wettlaufer’s actions began Tuesday in St. Thomas, Ont. The southwestern town is not far from the communities where the 50-year-old injected more than a dozen patients with overdoses of insulin while working at long-term care homes and private residences for nearly a decade.
Documents submitted as evidence to the inquiry show complaints about Wettlaufer began at the start of her career in 1995, and continued until she admitted in 2016 to killing multiple patients.
The complaints range from the mundane — that Wettlaufer had been eating her patients’ food — to the more egregious: that she made medication errors and harassed people.