WARNING: This story contains details of racist remarks.

A Winnipeg nurse accused of bullying patients and hospital staff over decades could lose her licence to practise in the province.

On Tuesday, an inquiry panel with the College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba heard about three complaints made against the nurse in 2020 and 2021, which allege she was condescending towards patients and junior staff, and intimidated them.

The nurse, who cannot be identified before a decision is made, has been licensed in Manitoba since the mid-1990s.

Although she previously acknowledged the date of the hearing, she didn’t show up on Tuesday and didn’t appoint anyone to represent her. A plea of not guilty was entered on her behalf by the panel.

David Swayze, the lawyer representing the college’s complaints investigation committee, asked the panel to find the nurse guilty of professional misconduct, to declare her “ungovernable” and strip her licence to practise in the province.

The nurse, who has been on an interim suspension since early 2025, has a disciplinary history that stretches back to 2007 and demonstrates a “repetitive pattern of behaviour,” Swayze said in his opening remarks.

The nurse was known to call junior staff names like “idiots” and “stupid,” receiving a number of complaints from her colleagues, and she also regularly called patients “pieces of sh-t,” the panel was told.

‘Bitter and mean’

The nurse is accused of denying a hospital bed to a homeless person with COVID-19, even after beds became available, and that patient didn’t comply with the hospital’s mask policy and was incontinent while waiting overnight in the ER waiting room, putting patients and staff at risk, the panel heard.

One patient who complained about the nurse said they felt humiliated and discriminated against while seeking care for severe stomach pain in July 2021, because she couldn’t speak much English and the nurse wouldn’t let her husband translate for her, Swayze said.

“If you don’t stop talking, I’m going to kick you out of the hospital,” the nurse told the woman’s husband, the panel heard.

Another patient — who has since passed away — said she also encountered the nurse while seeking care for severe abdominal pain in 2021, and that the nurse shushed her after she began to cry while describing her pain, Swayze said.

“Why are you crying? You need to stop that,” the nurse told the patient, the panel heard.

When the nurse learned that the patient was taking medications for ADHD and depression, she muttered “that explains it,” under her breath, the panel heard.

A third patient said the nurse refused to let them see a disoriented family member staying in hospital, even though they had permission to be there, the panel was told.

‘Vindictive and not patient-centred’

A doctor who previously worked with the nurse in a Winnipeg ER described her as “bitter and mean,” saying she was known to berate patients and their families by “kind of verbally [beating] them up,” the panel was told.

Another doctor said the nurse compromised patient care by micromanaging triage decisions and not admitting some patients into the hospital, which included not admitting patients who had recently been treated with naloxone, a college investigator said.

A third doctor said the nurse had a “repeated pattern of bullying and racist behaviour,” and that she was judgmental towards the disadvantaged, especially patients who were intoxicated, the investigator said.

That doctor also described one instance where the nurse sat and watched a team of hospital staff perform a “complex resuscitation,” later telling them it was the “worst resuscitation” she’d ever seen and that they were incompetent, according to the investigator.

Other doctors described the nurse as “vindictive and not patient-centred,” and acted in a “threatening, demeaning, hostile manner” towards patients, making them feel like they were being “grilled,” the panel was told.

The nurse is also accused of making racist remarks while on the job, which includes referring to people of East Indian descent as “alcoholics” and calling an Indigenous person “another drunk Indian,” the panel heard.

The nurse has been subject to four undertakings since 2007, and she’s taken so many remedial courses that a complaints committee said she was “exhausting all their educational tools,” the panel heard.

Although the nurse had reflected on her past conduct, the college’s investigator told the panel she wasn’t sure how remorseful the nurse actually was, considering her behaviour showed the “same conduct repeated over decades.”

The hearing continues Wednesday.