The Consumer Complaints Blog

Hospital for Sick Children should be renamed to Hospital for Tortured Children just as my husband said.

The Hospital For Sick Children is also known as one of the largest paediatric academic health science centres in the world, with an international reputation for excellence in health care, research, and teaching. They have a reputation of an excellent medical servise not only in Toronto but also around the world.

I just cannot understand why!!!?????

I know many of you will say that there are kids in far worth health condition than my son was at the time of our visit but trust me the point isn’t here. I just want to know who is responsible for the time waisted and pain and suffering that not only my son went through but all the other kids and their parents. So you can better understand, here is our little story about our resent emergency visit to the Sick Kids.

On the night of 22 December my husband, my son, 19 month and I visited the emergency department due to my son’s injury. He injured his left arm while we were walking from Christmas shopping to our car. My little boy tripped and almost fell. I said almost because he didn’t actually fell, as I was holding his hand. My first reaction of corse was to hold on tight to him but as he was falling one wrong move and he was on his knees and sideways. All happened too fast to understand what actually happened but he did started to cry so I picked him up, carried him to the car, and drove home. He was crying all the way and I thought that he is only tired and wants to go to sleep but when we got home I noticed that he refused to use his hand and it was painful for him even to have it touched. We rushed to the nearest hospital and had him checked. After a few hours we were sent home with Tylenol and were told to monitor him. Our boy would not settle down and after a dose of Tylenol he went to sleep only for one hour. After he woke up screaming we decided to take him to Sick Kids. On the way we picked up our x-rays from the first hospital and rushed to Sick Kids full of hopes. We arrived at the hospital at around midnight. After long, long registration process we finally spoke to an admitting nurse. After hearing what happened and looking at my son’s injured arm, she said that he has a pulled elbow. Also, she said that she would be able to fix it but prefers not to as she cannot handle baby’s cry and she doesn’t want to cause him any more pain that he is already in. The nurse also spoke to another nurse who just walked into the room and told her that it is her department so maybe she can do it. That nurse said that she prefers that the doctor does it. The admitting nurse gave a dose of a Tylenol to my son and sent us to wait some more.

How disappointing it was to wait for so long to get any help. We were bouncing from one room to another for more than five hours. Finally, after 5 hour wait we were given a room where we spent another hour waiting for a nurse to come and check his vital status. After that we asked if it will be long before we see the doctor from this point and were given an even more disappointing and frustrating response. We were told that there is a long wait before we can see the doctor even though we had a room already. By now my son was screaming from pain again and I went to ask for some more Tylenol. After half an hour when no one came with the medicine I went to look for the nurse who gave him Tylenol the first time but was not able to find her and had to go back and ask if I can give my son my own pain medication if they are unable to help. One nurse said that she will be there in a minute and after another 15 minutes of seeing my son screaming and suffering I gave him my own medication, Motrin. By then my husband was very frustrated, after all, we were told that it is a few minute job to fix the pulled elbow and that the pain goes away as soon as it is fixed, he started complaining to the nurses and asking how long do we need to see our son to scream in pain, how long will we all be tortured sitting in a tiny room and seeing our son have no escape from pain. We were told by a nurse that unfortunately our son is NOT SICK ENOUGH TO GET PRIORITY!!!!!!!

I couldn’t believe my ears…..Does my son has to stop breathing to get any attention??? It was unbelievable!!!! My husband was furios…
I know that at this point some of you will say for sure that all I am doing now is complaining but NO I am not!!! All of you DO!!! You know why??? Here is the reason.
Many of you take the transit to work and many many people depend on the service. Not one I am sure likes to see delays because nobody wants to be late for work. Guess what! My husband is driving one of those subway trains that you guys are taking to work and he ended up booking off with family emergency because we spent all night at the hospital and he didn’t get any rest and he wasn’t going to put any of you in danger just because of his sleepless night. So, I am sure one more train got parked that morning during rush hour because my husband was not there. Now do you get the picture???

So back to the Hospital with perfect reputation…

Basicaly, we were not able to sit and watch our tiny, helpless baby son suffer any longer. My husband picked our little 19 month old boy up and we left. WITHOUT GETTING ANY HELP!!!!!

We did learn a good lesson though. You have to be half dead and not breathing in order to get help at the Sick Kids Hospital . And we know for sure that we will never go back to seek help there, unfortunately. What a shame for “best” children’s hospital.

I know our story will not be published on their web site of Miracle Recovery Stories which are posted there in order for all of you sensitive and caring people to give them donations for their “great” work, but we will be sending messages and emails to different departments and spread the word of the “kindness” and “sensitivity” of The Sick Kids Hospital personnel.

Thank you for reading and hope you will be more lucky than we were.

P.S. Just a quick update on our son’s injury. He is getting better and better by the minute. He is gaining back the motion in his arm. We did ended up taking him to an after hour clinic for kids where we were helped withing an hour. Thank to the Dr.Patel and all caring staff our son is getting better.

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.

This is a case of “BUYER BEWARE” at Canadian Tire (Calgary Store #419, 64th Ave & Deerfoot Trail N.E, Calgary, Alberta). You need to look really closely at AND FOR the fine print before purchasing anything from them. And good luck finding the fine print disclosed anywhere except may be in an advertising flyer that goes directly from the mail box to the recycle bin.

Here’s my little story:

Apparently Christmas decorations were on sale a few days before and after Christmas with a “no returns policy” on them. No where on the shelf was that posted or highlighted. As well, it wasn’t disclosed on the receipt that the sale was final. All the receipt shows is the normal return/exchange policy (which I complied with -original receipt, original packaging, unused).

One of the items I purchased was not suitable and I tried to take it back (within 6 days). Upon entering the store, I now noticed signs posted around stating absolutely NO RETURNS accepted on “Class 51″ Christmas decorations. Oh, oh, did I buy a Class 51 Christmas decoration? I don’t know, I hope not. I ended up waiting in line for about 10 minutes to find out that I AM the unlucky owner of a Class 51 item.

I contacted the 1-800 Canadian Tire customer service number to find out whether this contradiction to the returns policy stated on the receipt was valid; I was directed to the disclosure in the advertising flyer.

Judging from other blogs and complaints, Canadian Tire continues to have a problem with adequate and accurate disclosure of prices and return policies.

Such a crappy experience! I will definitely go somewhere else where they work harder to keep their customers informed and satisfied.

D. Christensen, Calgary

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.