A nurse is appealing a ruling made by the College of Registered Nurses of Saskatchewan.

Jessica McCulloch and her legal team say they’re in the early stages of filing an appeal after she was found guilty of charges relating to mistakes made in administering medication while working at the Regional Psychiatric Centre and at the Saskatchewan Hospital in North Battleford.

She is also appealing the 50-thousand dollars she is on the hook for hearing costs.

McCulloch hasn’t worked since 2019 and is split on whether or not she will return to nursing.

“I loved my job at RPC, absolutely loved it. The way things went there, just wasn’t meant to be unfortunately. To go back now, I feel very torn. As a nurse, I am watching the news, I’m seeing other nurses struggle, I want to be there to help them, I want to do my job. How do you go back when you’re always looked at, this is always going to follow me.”

Back in 2011, McCulloch says she was taken hostage by an inmate at the psychiatric centre. This resulted in her suffering from PTSD. Despite requests to Corrections Service Canada to help support her after the incident, support was not given according to the nurse.

McCulloch says if the investigation by the College of Registered Nurses of Saskatchewan was handled properly, they would have saved themselves thousands of dollars and her PTSD wouldn’t have been aggravated. McCulloch was found not guilty on charges by the CRNS alleging she stole medication and contributed to the “underground drug trade within inmates at the RPC.”

McCulloch is also calling for an investigation of the CRNS discipline process so other nurses don’t suffer as she did. During a three-week hearing, witnesses by both the CRNS and McCulloch highlighted the poor management of narcotics at the RPS.

McCulloch’s legal team said doors at the RPC would be left open and keys would be passed on from nurse to nurse with no clear record of who was accessing the inventory and when medication was being taken.