‘The higher it went, the worse it got’: Alberta’s only heart surgeon alleges discrimination in complaint against health agency

Teresa Kieser, the only cardiac surgeon in Alberta, filed a human rights complaint against the province’s health agency, Alberta Health Services, alleging years of pay inequality, pervasive sexism, and gender discrimination.

Dr. Kieser alleges that since she began her career as a cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon in 1988 at Calgary’s Foothills Medical Center, where she still works, she has been forced to battle against institutional barriers, harassment, general disrespect and many unfounded complaints about her professional skills, all because she is a woman.

The most recent professional complaint resulted in Dr. Kieser losing her surgical privileges for more than a year, ultimately leading her to take legal action, she says.

That complaint was filed in November 2020 by a male colleague, who raised questions about her technical skills and clinical judgment in connection with two patient cases. This triggered an outside investigation and Dr. Kieser was unable to perform surgery while the review was underway, she says in her complaint to the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

A few months after that investigation, the external reviewer informed Alberta Health Services, which administers health care in the province, that properly evaluating the complaint would require an analysis of data from five years of Dr. Kieser’s work compared to the others. surgeons in your group.

AHS took no action, so the matter was remanded for a hearing, the complaint says. That hearing was scheduled for January 2022, more than a year after Dr. Kieser stopped performing surgery. But just before it happened, a settlement was struck, according to his attorney, Sophie Purnell. It was decided that the accusations would not proceed and Dr. Kieser’s surgical privileges were restored.

The allegations against AHS have not yet been reviewed by the Alberta Human Rights Commission. In a statement to The Globe, AHS said it could not comment on the case.

Dr. Kieser is the second prominent cardiac surgeon in Canada to make such a claim.

Last year, Irene Cybulsky won a gender discrimination case against Hamilton Health Sciences after the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal concluded that gender bias had played a role in her ouster as head of the hospital network’s cardiac surgery team.

She had been the first woman to hold the position in the network’s history, but lost her job after some of her male subordinates (all the surgeons on the team she chaired were men) raised concerns about her leadership style, which prompted an internal review. During that process, the men’s comments included that she was not soft enough and that she was “like a mother telling her children what to do.”

The court has not yet held a hearing to decide on remedies for Dr. Cybulsky’s complaint.

Because there is a one-year limitation period for human rights complaints, the Alberta commission will only review the most recent incidents included in Dr. Kieser’s complaint, primarily the events that led to her losing her surgical privileges. But the 11-page document details years of alleged mistreatment and misogyny as context for later events.

The claim describes four occasions when male colleagues raised concerns about Dr. Kieser’s surgical skills and judgment. According to his claim, the first complaint about his technical skills was made in 2004, and an external reviewer found no basis for the allegation. Then in 2013, according to the claim, one of Dr. Kieser’s male superiors told her that he was taking longer than his male colleagues to perform certain procedures. He allegedly suggested that he retire. (Dr. Kieser is now 70 years old. Her human rights complaint also alleges age discrimination.)

“Dr. Kieser explained that he uses a different operating technique than his colleagues, which takes more time,” the claim says. (The technique involves the use of arterial grafts rather than vein grafts, the former of which they last longer.The claim says that this technique is now becoming standard practice.) claim.

The claim describes a third incident, in 2019, when the wife of a patient of one of Dr. Kieser’s male colleagues approached her for help. The woman was concerned about the care her husband was receiving from a male doctor and she asked Dr. Kieser to speak with the doctor, which Dr. Kieser did.

The man “became very hostile,” the complaint says, telling Dr. Kieser that questioning his care was unprofessional and that she should “be very careful.” A month later, that doctor filed a complaint against Dr. Kieser, questioning her performance and her technical skills. The complaint was not pursued, the complaint says.

From the beginning of her time as a surgeon, Dr. Kieser says in her statement, it was clear that some of her male colleagues automatically thought less of her because she was a woman.

For example, when she headed the cardiac surgery program at Foothills Medical Center (in fact, she was the first female cardiac surgeon there), all of her counterparts in other specialties were called “chief,” but she was addressed by a subordinate title: “coordinator.” .” All cardiac surgeons appointed after her were immediately referred to as “bosses,” she alleges in her claim.

In a response sent to the commission, AHS denies that Dr. Kieser was ever discriminated against. The health agency also questions the admissibility of any alleged incidents outside the one-year limitation period.

In one section of the response, the agency argues that Dr. Kieser is not an employee of Alberta Health Services. Rather, she says, she is a physician with privileges that allow her to provide clinical services at AHS sites. (This is the employment status of most physicians in the country. Physicians are essentially independent contractors who bill the government directly for services.)

Last year, The Globe and Mail looked at the unique challenges facing women in medicine as part of an investigative series called Power Gap, which examined gender inequalities in the workforce. Female doctors reported being pushed into less lucrative specialties That men during medical school, receiving fewer referrals, receiving less mentorship, receiving harsher criticism, and having doubts about her abilities from both her male colleagues and her patients.

A Globe analysis of physician leadership at Ontario’s 10 largest hospital corporations found that only 32 percent of department heads, 29 percent of division heads and 23 percent of those with management positions prestigious researchers were women, despite the fact that the number of male and female first-year medical residents has been more or less the same for two decades. About 30 percent of department heads appeared to be of color, and the numbers were similar for men and women.

In an interview, Dr. Kieser said that over the years she had always felt that what was happening to her was wrong, but that it had never occurred to her to file a formal complaint. Women pay a high price if they complain, she said.

“I thought if I put my head down and did my job really well, I would save the day. I felt like if I moved on, if I wrote articles, if I got found out, maybe I could get away from this. But the higher it went, the worse it got.”

When he lost his surgical privileges, and the ability to do what he loved, that, he said, was the breaking point. And not just because of the pain he caused her personally, he added, but because he worried about what doing nothing would mean for the next generation.

“Four of the eight cardiac surgery residents at Foothills are women. I realized that if I don’t take a stand here and say something, this could happen to them. It will never stop unless someone points out what’s going on.”

In her lawsuit, Dr. Kieser requests $500,000 in compensation for pain and suffering, plus reimbursement for lost wages (her attorney estimates the amount to be around $480,000). She also asks that AHS be directed to run educational programs designed to eliminate sex, gender and age discrimination within the cardiac surgery department.

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