Métis woman speaks out after being turned away from St. Boniface Hospital in medical distress

Warning: This story contains graphic images.

A Métis woman who lives with diabetes is speaking out after she says she was turned away from a hospital emergency department in Winnipeg last week while in medical distress.

Jacqueline Flett, 38, went to St. Boniface Hospital last Thursday, after she developed a painful ulcer on her foot and her blood sugar levels were off. She knew something was wrong.

"The infection was going up my leg — it was excruciating pain," said Flett. "My foot was like three times the [usual] size."

Before going to the hospital, she checked wait times on the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority wait time website.

Flett says after she arrived, she waited two hours in the wait room before being triaged, which seemed out of step with the wait times posted online.

She eventually approached the nurses, who she says told her they hadn't seen her waiting. A nurse took Flett's temperature and began the intake process.

There were only three other people waiting in the seats around her after she'd had her temperature taken, Flett said.

She sat back down, but was frustrated and started documenting details of her visit on her phone. Then she tried calling patient relations.

A short time later, she says she saw nursing staff call security guards over. Flett said the guards approached her and told her the nurses claimed she was using the camera on her phone to take photos or video.

That isn't allowed in hospitals under the Personal Health Information Act. Flett says she was aware of this and hadn't been filming or taking pictures.

The guards asked to see her phone. Flett allowed them to take a look, but all they found were photos of her kids and her diabetic foot wound, she said.

"They seen that there was no pictures, there was no videos. They went on my social media, there was no pictures or video on my Snapchat," said Flett. "They told me I was to go to another hospital."

The suspicion and long wait she experienced reminded her of Brian Sinclair, whose death at another Winnipeg hospital has been called a preventable product of racism.