Former RN agrees to temporarily stay out of Horizon facilities

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A former registered nurse accused of harassing staff at Saint John’s two hospitals has agreed to temporarily stay out of Horizon Health Network’s 12 hospitals and 45 health-care centres with some exceptions.

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Donna Marie Collins, of Upper Loch Lomond, will only be allowed to enter Horizon facilities for emergency treatment for “a legitimate personal medical concern,” to obtain medical services ordered by a physician or nurse practitioner, and for a scheduled visit of a registered Horizon patient, according to a copy of a draft order prepared by lawyers for Horizon Health Network.

In all other circumstances, Collins will be prohibited from both entering these facilities and from communicating with Horizon staff. She will also be prohibited from “publishing in any format any defamatory written communication” about Horizon and its staff.

Lawyers representing Horizon and Collins agreed Tuesday on behalf of their clients to a consent order with those terms. They planned to draw that order up and present it to Court of King’s Bench Justice Kathryn Gregory later in the day for signature.

Tuesday’s hearing had originally been called to deal with Horizon’s motion for an interlocutory – or temporary – injunction against Collins to limit her interaction with Horizon pending the outcome of a lawsuit.

“We’ve had an opportunity to speak beforehand, and I think we’ve reached an agreement to some wording in a consent order that would be satisfactory,” said personal injury lawyer Tim Collins, who represented his wife Donna Marie Collins in court in Saint John Tuesday.

Outside the courthouse, Donna Marie Collins declined to comment on her decision to agree to a consent order and the allegations Horizon has made about her behaviour in a lawsuit filed against her.

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In that lawsuit, Horizon alleges Collins’s “longstanding” harassing behaviour against the regional health authority and its employees has escalated since the spring, with “incidents” at the Saint John Regional Hospital and at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Horizon is seeking injunctive relief, an undisclosed amount for damages, costs for the legal action, and “such further and other relief” offered by the court.

Since spring, Collins has allegedly delivered in person and by fax “voluminous packages of documents” frequently containing “harassing comments and unsubstantiated allegations of negligence and incompetence” against Horizon staff.

In two separate incidents – on July 11 and again on Aug. 2 – Collins is alleged to have trespassed on Horizon property, photographed staff without their consent, handed them “unwanted packages of documents that forced them away from their duties,” and disclosed “the private affairs of patients related to employees of (Horizon),” according to Horizon’s amended statement of claim filed on Oct. 17.

“These incidents made (Horizon’s) employees concerned for their safety and for their privacy as well as the safety and privacy of (its) patients,” Horizon wrote in an Oct. 18 motion seeking an interlocutory injunction against Collins pending the final outcome of the lawsuit.

On other occasions, Collins, “who is not a licensed medical practitioner of any kind,” has demanded Horizon expeditate medical services for “third parties,” and if her demands are “refused,” she will “verbally abuse” staff, the regional health authority alleges in its lawsuit.

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None of these allegations have yet to be tested in court.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Collins lists herself as the president and CEO of Crystal Clear Transitional Care, which is described on its website as a “clinical practice research firm” focused on the treatment and management of substance use disorders.

In 2017, Collins ran afoul of the Nurses Association of New Brunswick (NANB) for the “improper use of actual and fictitious nursing designations” while “distributing information” to government officials, Canadian nurse regulators and other parties through her position with Crystal Clear Transitional Care.

After a disciplinary hearing, Collins was reprimanded and ordered to pay a total of $13,000.

In a special advisory on its website, the NANB notes that while it “frequently receives inquiries” about Collins’s registration status, she remains “not authorized to practice nursing in New Brunswick, to hold herself out as a person authorized to practice nursing, or to use such designations.”

In a June 10, 2024 letter addressed to federal Health Minister Mark Holland, Collins wrote that she is a “private duty nurse practitioner” able to travel with the minister to India “to address immediate and necessary changes” to a naloxone kit produced in the country, according to a copy of the letter on the Crystal Clear Transitional Care website.

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