Nancy Parsons told the Cameron inquiry she was frustrated with limitations on what she could say to patients. (CBC)

A nurse who was assigned to speak with distraught breast cancer patients has told a St. John's inquiry she was ill-equipped to provide meaningful answers, and wasn't allowed to give them test results directly.

Nancy Parsons testified Wednesday that she was prohibited from relaying critical information about specific patients' hormone receptor test results, even though the patients were eagerly looking for them.

Parsons told the Cameron inquiry that, as a nurse, she was not allowed to tell a patient about a changed test result or diagnosis unless a physician had given permission.

Parsons, a registered nurse who is now retired, testified Wednesday that she could access patient information, but was frustrated that she could not speak directly with them — even though Eastern Health had assigned her to communicate with patients after the public learned in October 2005 that there were errors with hormone receptor tests.

"I would tell the patient that I had no information for them," Parsons told Justice Margaret Cameron.

Inquiry co-counsel Bern Coffey then asked, "Was that literally true?"

Parsons replied, "I wasn't authorized to release it."

Parsons told patients that they could contact their physician if they did not hear anything about their retest results. However, the inquiry has been told that the results for some patients were not given to them promptly, with some being misplaced and others evidently forgotten about for months. Earlier this year, the Newfoundland and Labrador government revealed that some patients had yet to be given the results of their retested samples.

Not told much in 2005 about testing problems

On Tuesday, Parsons said that she was not told very much about the problems with hormone receptor tests, which are used to help determine whether a breast cancer patient can benefit from the antihormonal drug Tamoxifen.

'The patients who were calling were very brave. They were calling seeking information. And often I couldn't — I didn't know the answers.'—Nancy Parsons

"I didn't have an in-depth understanding of the problem," said Parsons.

"However, I was aware that we were looking at more and more test results and I, as an individual, was not aware of the extent of the problem."

Even so, Parsons became a primary point of contact at Eastern Health, the authority that manages the pathology lab where hundreds of tests were ultimately found to have been inaccurately handled between 1997 and 2005.

Parsons said that many of the patients only wanted to know one thing: how mistakes could have happened.

Parsons said she told patients that Eastern Health did not know what went wrong, although the mistakes were believed to be a lab problem.

To this day, Parsons testified, she has never officially been told what happened, even though Eastern Health had in 2005 asked two external experts to review the lab. They found a myriad of problems, ranging from dismal training to high staff turnover.

Eastern Health lost a bid in Newfoundland Supreme Court earlier this year to keep those reports secret.

Patients often wanted to vent frustrations

Parsons said she found herself dealing with increasingly frustrated patients — some of whom, she said, only wanted to vent while others said they wanted to sue.

Still, she said, she admired the courage of the patients.

"It was a very stressful experience for me. The patients who were calling were very brave," she said during testimony on Tuesday.

"They were calling seeking information. And often I couldn't — I didn't know the answers, and I would have to go away and try to find it."

Parsons testified that she relied on colleagues for information, but found there were often delays in getting information because of heavy workloads.

"And they would keep calling me and I would say, 'Well, I've asked so-and-so to check on that for you, but I've heard nothing back,' " she said.

No communications plan in place

The inquiry was told this spring that Eastern Health did not have a communications plan that officials could use in case the public learned that there were problems.

The authority and the Newfoundland and Labrador government decided in July 2005 not to inform patients and the public about problems with the tests, at least until a retesting program was completed.

Even so, several officials testified that they expected the public would sooner or later find out about problems with hormone receptor tests. The first story about the tests was published in October 2005, in the weekly St. John's Independent newspaper.

In the early months of the crisis, Eastern Health advised staff to direct calls from breast cancer patients to Parsons.

"Did you ever have any misgiving about that, based upon the amount of knowledge you did or didn't have?" inquiry co-counsel Bern Coffey asked Parsons.

"Yes," she replied.