"Women's health- presenting with a painful vagina"

I am disgusted by my recent experience. Around midday, I felt sharp pain in my vagina on one side. The pain was so bad I wanted to double over and scream. I phoned nurse on call and endured a wait time of about 1 and a half hours. The nurse on call tells me to go to a hospital.

I had great anxiety with going to the hospital because no matter how much pain I am in or what’s happening, I feel I am always triaged last and this day was no exception.

So I recall after waiting a grueling couple of hours, someone finally comes out to me in the waiting area. I get up expecting to be taken to a doctor and get some scans, but no, it seemed to me they just wanted to tell me that they have decided that my matter isn’t important enough to see someone, they’re going to do a Telehealth consult. They gave me a sheet of paper with, in my opinion, the most dumb Telehealth consult instructions ever.

It’s at this point I decided to go home. I figured that they’d call me when my time was up. At the time of writing this, it had been 6 hours since after I left. I read the instructions again - As I understand it, they wanted me to wait so that a doctor will call me but only if I stayed in the hospital! I was in pain, I recall I wasn’t even offered any painkillers and I believe they thought that this lack of care was acceptable.

The pain got worse and was unbearable. I am so disappointed that we have a healthcare system that based on my experience, believes women's issues don’t matter.

I have some suggestions:

1. If nurse on call says that we are to go to the hospital then I believe this should bump us up the triage. I feel that we should be given a reference number when we call nurse on call and they should read it.

2. In my opinion, don’t allow people to take calls when admitting a patient. And if you do decide to take calls hang up if it’s something I believe is as mundane as following up covid test results.

3. Based on my experience, hire people that display greater care than the staff who I dealt with.