Interlake paramedic disciplined, fined for misconduct

A paramedic has been disciplined for repeatedly sparring with hospital officials and making sexist comments to female subordinates while working as the superintendent of the Fisher Ambulance Service, among other misconduct.

The College of Paramedics of Manitoba reprimanded Stefan Zueff, imposed conditions on his licence, fined him $5,000 and ordered him to pay $5,000 in costs, in a November disciplinary decision recently made public.

He pleaded guilty to several charges of professional misconduct, which spanned late 2021 to early 2023, the college’s decision says

The ambulance service provides emergency medical response to the Rural Municipality of Fisher and Peguis, Fisher River and Kinonjeoshtegon First Nations in the Interlake.

Zueff is no longer the superintendent of the service.

Zueff repeatedly and unprofessionally communicated with personnel at the Percy E. Moore Hospital in Peguis in person and via email between October 2021 and May 2022, says the decision.

On April 25, 2022, Zueff sent an email to the hospital advising that the service would be suspending all inter-facility transfers from the hospital to other facilities as a result of a disagreement about the service being given a duplicate of a patient’s chart, the decision says.

He sent a second email that same day saying that if a patient needed a transfer, and a duplicate chart wasn’t given to paramedics, the doctor who ordered the patient transferred would have to ride along and care for the patient in the ambulance.

On May 30, Zueff threatened that the service would not transfer a high-risk patient and “imposed unreasonable conditions” on the transfer unless his chart demands were accepted by the hospital.

“This threat was made without reference to the health condition of the patient requiring the inter-facility transfer,” reads the disciplinary decision.

Zueff then confronted the hospital’s patient services director in her office that same day, acting “in a disrespectful, abusive, aggressive and threatening manner,” over the transfer of the patient and the service’s request for a duplicate chart.

Earlier, in October 2021, he sent emails to the patient services director and others, accusing personnel of lying on forms about the availability of beds in the hospital and accusing hospital personnel of “a lack of general common sense” and of attempting to transport a newborn unsafely.

Zueff, while the head of the service, spoke with his female subordinates in a “disrespectful, sexist and degrading manner” between February and December of 2022.

Zueff made demeaning comments about women’s genitals and patients who had given birth, according to the decision.

He was suspended from his role as superintendent at some point late in 2022.

Despite his suspension — and being told by his employer not to get involved with the ambulance service’s operations in any way — he repeatedly contacted subordinates in December 2022 and January 2023.

He asked staff members to start a petition to reinstate him as superintendent, asked them for specific information about patients and the service with the intent of “leaking” information to the public or press, told them he thought other members of the service had betrayed him and asked for them to send him screenshots of emails about an “aggressive patient,” says the decision.

While under investigation for misconduct by the Manitoba college, Zueff also failed to disclose the full extent of his prior misconduct while working as a paramedic in Saskatchewan.

He had previously admitted to improperly administering powerful narcotics and other drugs, among other professional misdeeds, to that province’s provincial regulator.

The Manitoba college found his attempt to minimize his prior misconduct was an attempt to mislead the investigation.

Zueff became a technician paramedic in Manitoba in 1995 and became an advanced care paramedic in Saskatchewan in 2015. He has worked in three provinces and has taught paramedicine.

The conditions imposed on Zueff’s licence dictate that he continue to see a doctor for unspecified treatment to address “areas of concern” identified by the doctor, who previously assessed Zueff’s fitness to practice paramedicine.

He must see the doctor for at least six months. The doctor will then advise the college’s registrar whether Zueff will need further treatment.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca