A 24-year-old Kingston, Ont., woman has been sentenced to house arrest for what a judge called a series of lies that included forging nursing credentials that allowed her to treat roughly 200 patients before being found out.
Madeline Stenhouse appeared in the Ontario Court of Justice on Tuesday wearing a black suit and glasses. She nodded as Justice Alison Wheeler described her “youthfulness” as a reason to show restraint in sentencing.
“Ms. Stenhouses’s offending was the product of immaturity in not knowing how to accept or deal with the fact that she failed nursing school,” the judge read from her decision.
The fake nurse was sentenced to two years less a day to be served in the community, including 18 months of house arrest.
She was also ordered to complete 240 hours of community service with the Elizabeth Fry Society and to pay $40,000 to the University Hospitals for Kingston Foundation.
In delivering her sentence, Wheeler said patients rely on the health-care system and must be confident they’re being cared for by professionals.
“Ms. Stenhouses’s conduct was calculated, sustained and had the potential to harm a wide range of people who were in a medically vulnerable state,” said the judge.
Stenhouse previously pleaded guilty to defrauding Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) of more than $5,000 and using a forged document.
Court heard she repeatedly lied about her level of education and provided falsified credentials, including a photo of a degree she had not earned and a doctored screenshot from the website for the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO).
Assistant Crown attorney Courtney Cottle had called for a jail sentence, urging the court to draw a “harsh line” to deter anyone else considering impersonating a health-care worker.
Stenhouse actively deceived the hospital and put people at risk every day despite multiple opportunities to come clean, the lawyer argued, adding the accused was “essentially committing fraud for 672 days.”
“It’s not a matter whether it was about financial gain, immaturity, wanting to please her parents.… This is about her being in a position of responsibility to care for people when they’re extremely vulnerable,” said the Crown.
“The only way … to try and stop this behaviour is to show people that you will go to jail. Real jail.”
Stenhouse apologized, describing her arrest as a “wake-up call” and taking responsibility for her actions.
“I never intended to cause harm and it is not lost on me, the seriousness of what I did,” she read from a piece of paper during an April court appearance. “I regret every second of it.”
On Tuesday, Wheeler read out the facts of the case, counting seven lies Stenhouse had told during her time at the Kingston General Hospital.
She initially applied to be a nursing assistant in April 2021, providing verification of enrolment from St. Lawrence College showing she was in her third year. However, she had forged that document, court heard.
In fact, Stenhouse had dropped out in the fall of 2019 and all information she provided about her studies was false. That included her application in April 2022 to work as a registered nurse, according to the facts.
Court heard Stenhouse was given the paperwork to obtain a temporary licence but never submitted it. Meanwhile, she completed “buddy shifts” and was assigned to a surgical floor.
Starting in August 2022, she began caring for patients without supervision, doing so for nearly five months before she was asked to provide her college registration number on Jan. 25, 2023.
Stenhouse sent a screenshot of the CNO website that appeared to show her licence and registration number, but when hospital staff contacted the college they learned she wasn’t in its database.
During a Jan. 30, 2023, meeting with hospital staff, Stenhouse admitted she’d created the screenshot, but claimed she’d sent it by mistake, the judge read from the facts.
Two days later, she again met with staff at the hospital and was asked to provide proof of her education. Instead, she showed a picture of her degree, saying she hadn’t brought the original because she’d travelled by bus, court heard.
Stenhouse was fired that same day. Court was told her earnings including benefits totalled $46,717.02.
Defence lawyer Michael Mandelcorn had called for his client to be sentenced to house arrest.
While he agreed that a nurse without proper training could potentially put patients at risk, he noted there had been no complaints about the care Stenhouse had provided.
Mandelcorn said his client started struggling with anxiety and depression in high school, which continued as she started her nursing program.
Asked by Justice Wheeler why Stenhouse impersonated a nurse, the lawyer said it was a difficult question to answer but suggested her mental health and unwillingness to tell her parents that she’d flunked out had played a role.
“If Ms. Stenhouse … could completely articulate why she did that, she would not have done it,” Mandelcorn said.
KHSC announced in February 2023 that it had fired an employee who provided “extensive forged documentation” in order to treat roughly 200 patients. A spokesperson said it was the first time KHSC had encountered such a situation.
Following the incident, the hospital said it had changed its policies so that orientation for new nursing graduates would only begin after their registration had been verified. The hospital will also check the status of its nurses with CNO monthly instead of annually.
The college previously told CBC it has online tools to quickly check the registration status of anyone claiming to be a nurse, however a simple online search of Stenhouse’s first and last name using the CNO’s “Find a Nurse” tool revealed no results.
Instead, her name now appears on a list of “unregistered practitioners,” which the college’s website states is for individuals who are not nurses but may “holding themselves out” as qualified for the job.
