'A terrible experience': Patients spent days on overflow stretchers in Corner Brook hospital

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. 

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.