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N.L. Health Board 'Messed Up,' Communications Director Tells Cancer Inquiry

Posted on: Monday, 2 June 2008, 15:01 CDT

By Tara Brautigam, THE CANADIAN PRESS

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - The woman responsible for communications at a Newfoundland health board said Monday she attacked the credibility of three people, including a patient, who spoke out on cancer testing errors out of frustration over intense media coverage.

Susan Bonnell, director of communications for the Eastern Health authority, told a public inquiry she was under extreme stress from repeated media inquiries after the full scope of the testing errors for breast cancer became known in May 2007.

At the time, Bonnell wrote an e-mail to Eastern Health executives criticizing the credibility of three people, including patient Gerry Rogers, after they spoke to the media about the testing errors.

"I knew we had messed this up and that we had nobody to blame but ourselves," Bonnell testified.

"Over the last year we had handled this issue very ineffectively from a communications perspective and I think I was reacting to the two-day onslaught of media coverage, a lot of which was ... unfair, but on the other side, why did we deserve fair coverage?"

Bonnell said the e-mail, in which she compared Rogers, Canadian Cancer Society spokesman Peter Dawe and lawyer Ches Crosbie to "schoolyard bullies" with an axe to grind, wasn't reflective of how she truly felt.

"It's just patently false and I never even felt that way beyond that moment that I, in anger, whipped out this e-mail," Bonnell said.

"I say to my children, 'Don't put anything in writing that you wouldn't want to defend.' This is one of those things, sir. It's indefensible."

The inquiry is trying to determine how roughly 400 patients were given inaccurate results on their breast cancer tests and whether Eastern Health or any other responsible authorities responded to patients and the public in an appropriate and timely manner.

The inquiry is focusing on hormone-receptor tests, which are used by doctors to determine the course of treatment for breast-cancer patients.

If patients are found to be estrogen-and/or progesterone-positive, they may respond to hormone therapy such as Tamoxifen. If not, they may be given a range of other treatments, or no treatment at all, depending on the characteristics of the patient's cancer.

In the spring of 2005, doctors began questioning the hormone-receptor test results of a patient with invasive lobular carcinoma, a form of breast cancer.

After retesting, it was discovered that the initial test result was wrong, as were those for a small sample of other patients.

Eastern Health subsequently halted testing in its lab and transferred its hormone-receptor tests to Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

The health board then started a review of all hormone-receptor tests from 1997 to 2005.

Source: Canadian Press

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