After spending six days on a hospital stretcher, Jaymee Miller said she hopes she never has to be admitted to the Western Memorial Regional Hospital in Corner Brook ever again.
“It felt degrading,” said Miller, who was admitted last month with diverticulitis — an illness that causes significant stomach pain.
“It was just a terrible experience.”
Those six days on the stretcher were spent in a small room with no windows. She said she hardly slept. In order to use the bathroom, Miller said, she would have to exit the hospital pod with her IV pole.
“I was in excruciating pain,” she said. “[At] times I thought I was going to pass out and I was like, ‘Well, nobody’s going to know I’m here.’”
She wasn’t able to bathe either, and said she was only offered a shower on her fifth day after asking multiple times.
And by the sixth day, Miller said she was so tired and in so much pain that she broke down in tears — and then offered a hospital bed where she spent three days.
“[It] still makes me upset to think about this. Like it wasn’t right,” she said.
‘No privacy at all’
Leanne Renouf said she had a similar experience, spending three days on a stretcher at the same hospital.
Renouf said she was moved out of the room where she spent her first night.
“Basically a little nook in the hallway where they store towels and blankets, and I was put on the stretcher in there,” she said. “People were coming and going and getting towels. I had no privacy at all.”
That evening, she said she was moved into “overflow.”
“I thought I was getting a bed. I was once again placed on a stretcher, in basically a room that looked like basically a little closet,” she said.
Sleep was difficult, she said, as the room had automatic lights that would turn on with movement.
She also said a shower was never offered.
“I was totally exhausted,” she said. “I used a bowl of water to try and … wash myself.”
Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services acknowledged the overflow issue at Corner Brook’s new hospital before.
While it originally opened with 164 beds in June 2024, an additional 30 long-term care beds and 15 transitional care beds were opened last fall to address the overflow issue.
In a statement to CBC News, NLHS spokesperson Jeanette O’Keefe said the health authority recognizes that “being cared for outside of a traditional room can be distressing.”
She said NLHS works to minimize these situations as much as possible, but sometimes health-care facilities can experience high patient volumes, like during the flu season.
Two women say they spent days on stretchers after being admitted to the Western Memorial Regional Hospital in Corner Brook. One emergency room doctor says patient overflow is due to system failure.
“As a result, designated overflow areas are being used to safely care for patients when regular hospital beds are full,” she wrote.
O’Keefe said patients are assessed to confirm if overflow areas can safely meet their care needs.
“Should those needs change, an alternate bed is assigned,” she wrote.
‘Hallway medicine’
Dr. Scott Wilson, a St. John’s emergency room physician and a member of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, said placing patients on stretchers in overflow spaces can impair care, and it shouldn’t happen.
“We call it hallway medicine,” he said.
“[There’s] no room, no bathroom, no privacy, lights on all the time, no night and day sense for your circadian clock.”
The province’s nurses’ union also sounded the alarm about patient overflow in December, when at least 50 nurses were mandated to work overtime.
Registered Nurses’ Union of Newfoundland and Labrador president Yvette Coffey said overflow of patients being put into physiotherapy rooms, closet spaces and corridors raised concerns about working conditions.
In a statement sent to CBC News, Coffey said she is once again concerned about reports of overcrowding.
“No one should spend days on a stretcher without privacy or proper access to basic necessities such as a bathroom or shower,” she wrote. “That affects a person’s dignity and overall wellbeing.”
‘System failure’
Wilson said the problem comes down to “system failure.”
He said patients are forced to stay on emergency room stretchers because acute care beds are blocked by patients who can’t leave due to lack of community support or long-term care.
He said that problem puts the patient at greater risk.
“The longer you spend in an emergency room as an inpatient, the greater likelihood is that you’re going to have further complications,” he said.
Download our free CBC News app to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our daily headlines newsletter here. Click here to visit our landing page.
