Ylöjärvi poisoning suspicions alert authorities of need to check criminal backgrounds of workers
In health care recruitment it is practically impossible to find out comprehensively what kind of misdemeanours or serious crimes a potential member of the nursing staff may have previously committed.
The matter was brought to daylight in connection with the murder suspicions surrounding the deaths of two mentally handicapped patients in Ylöjärvi. A 26-year-old woman is suspected, among other things, of poisoning two people.
The late-edition tabloid Ilta-Sanomat reported on Tuesday that the woman was already a suspect in a case of the disappearance of prescription medications at her previous job at the Nokia Health Centre, but because of lack of conclusive evidence charges were not brought against her.
In the spring the woman was actually charged over several cases of shoplifting totalling goods worth EUR 40,000 damage from a Nokia supermarket, where she worked as a salesperson and as a cleaner for a period of over two years.
This time she was convicted of theft, but the penalty was annulled after she replaced EUR 20,000 of the sum.
In the court’s view a prison sentence and a criminal record might have complicated the woman’s chances for future employment. At the time she was only a health care student.
Likewise, the court saw that imposing heavy fines would have been unreasonable, given the fact that the woman had already taken out a large bank loan in order to repay the losses to her former employer.
In court the woman said she was extremely sorry for what she had done, and that she was deeply ashamed, which the court believed to be true.
The chances of a new employer finding out about such previous activities is extremely unlikely. There are no mechanisms to convey this kind of information from a district court to a potential employer, especially when the committed crimes were related to civilian life with nothing to do with the health care field.
Furthermore, hundreds and hundreds of health care personnel, both locum, fixed period, and permanent staff members, are hired in Finland every week. The task of looking into everybody’s background would be immense.
"The employer bears the responsibility and decides to what extent a background check is motivated and meaningful. The kind of background checks are definitely taking place, in which the potential employer calls previous employers or otherwise tries to ascertain details about the applicant's work history", says deputy director Tarja Holi of the National Authority for Medicolegal Affairs.
"A possible criminal background is not looked into, and there are no possibilities of doing so, unless the applicant volunteers the information. Our legislation only covers the checking of criminal backgrounds of people who wish to work with children", explains Legal Affairs Ministerial Counsellor Pekka Järvinen from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.
"It is difficult to say whether it would make any difference. In my understanding, not very often.”
An altogether different matter would be how to evaluate the effect of various past crimes – tax fraud, speeding, or assault and battery to name but a few – on a person’s suitability to perform health care tasks.
Around 130,000 people work in the Finnish health care sector.
The matter was brought to daylight in connection with the murder suspicions surrounding the deaths of two mentally handicapped patients in Ylöjärvi. A 26-year-old woman is suspected, among other things, of poisoning two people.
The late-edition tabloid Ilta-Sanomat reported on Tuesday that the woman was already a suspect in a case of the disappearance of prescription medications at her previous job at the Nokia Health Centre, but because of lack of conclusive evidence charges were not brought against her.
In the spring the woman was actually charged over several cases of shoplifting totalling goods worth EUR 40,000 damage from a Nokia supermarket, where she worked as a salesperson and as a cleaner for a period of over two years.
This time she was convicted of theft, but the penalty was annulled after she replaced EUR 20,000 of the sum.
In the court’s view a prison sentence and a criminal record might have complicated the woman’s chances for future employment. At the time she was only a health care student.
Likewise, the court saw that imposing heavy fines would have been unreasonable, given the fact that the woman had already taken out a large bank loan in order to repay the losses to her former employer.
In court the woman said she was extremely sorry for what she had done, and that she was deeply ashamed, which the court believed to be true.
The chances of a new employer finding out about such previous activities is extremely unlikely. There are no mechanisms to convey this kind of information from a district court to a potential employer, especially when the committed crimes were related to civilian life with nothing to do with the health care field.
Furthermore, hundreds and hundreds of health care personnel, both locum, fixed period, and permanent staff members, are hired in Finland every week. The task of looking into everybody’s background would be immense.
"The employer bears the responsibility and decides to what extent a background check is motivated and meaningful. The kind of background checks are definitely taking place, in which the potential employer calls previous employers or otherwise tries to ascertain details about the applicant's work history", says deputy director Tarja Holi of the National Authority for Medicolegal Affairs.
"A possible criminal background is not looked into, and there are no possibilities of doing so, unless the applicant volunteers the information. Our legislation only covers the checking of criminal backgrounds of people who wish to work with children", explains Legal Affairs Ministerial Counsellor Pekka Järvinen from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.
"It is difficult to say whether it would make any difference. In my understanding, not very often.”
An altogether different matter would be how to evaluate the effect of various past crimes – tax fraud, speeding, or assault and battery to name but a few – on a person’s suitability to perform health care tasks.
Around 130,000 people work in the Finnish health care sector.
Helsingin Sanomat