A woman who says she was repeatedly denied adequate emergency care last spring is blasting the Newfoundland and Labrador health-care system, saying she’s been left psychologically scarred after being told several times that her gangrenous appendix was simply anxiety or constipation.

Joy Spence, 21, said she visited emergency departments at two hospitals in St. John’s over the course of nearly two weeks this May.

What began as weakness and abdominal pain on her right side quickly deteriorated into blacking out from the agony in her torso.

  • sbv@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    the head of emergency departments for the St. John’s metro region rejects the allegation that women are being dismissed because of their gender within his hospitals, […] “We treat medical issues, not what your sex is, not what your age is … [everyone is] put through the process of triage assessment, disposition and follow-up advice. So everybody’s treated in the same way.”

    Translation: we misdiagnose everyone

    /s

    It’d be cool to see stats on this stuff. How many times do people have to return to the ER for the same problem? How long does it take to reach a resolution about individual issues? Anecdotally we know it’s bad, but how bad is it?