Hospital For Sick Children, A Mother’s Complaint
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.
January 21st, 2008 at 4:04 am
It sounds like there was a fundamental miscommunication in this situation. The nurses ought to have been explained to you that triage (the process whereby patients are organized for treatment) works based primarily on two priorities: bleeding and breathing.
If you aren’t bleeding, and you’re breathing, you’re going to the back of the queue. That’s all there is to it. You’re conscious, breathing, crying? All good signs. Wait your turn.
Consider this: the whole time you were waiting with your son, there were ambulances and helicopters delivering children from all over the province with serious, life-threatening injuries, each one pushing your son further and further down the line.
A hospital is not like a deli. It does not operate on a first come, first serve basis. Although your child was no doubt injured, it was not life-threatening. Did you stop to consider that there were likely children who were dying ahead of you in the queue?
Remember, they treat children with rare, terminal, and life-threatening illnesses at Sick Kids. And yet you would question the hospital’s world-class status? I’m sorry, but an elbow injury is simply not a priority. Basic first aid would tell you that. Common sense would tell you that.
Unfortunately, every parent in every hospital likely feels that their child is the sickest of the sick, and I don’t fault you for that: you must have felt terrible and helpless, seeing your child hurting, without being able to help. What an awful, frustrating feeling.
However, it is for this very reason that after-hours clinics exist. Hospitals are for the seriously injured. For everything else, a non-emergency setting like a clinic is appropriate. If your son had been accidentally poisoned, for example, I would have no issue with you going straight to the ER. But for an injury treatable with Tylenol? Why waste the hospital’s (and your family’s) time?
This is what contributes to long wait times: individuals unfamiliar with how the system works go to the hospital with minor injuries, cuts and bruises, the sniffles, and other inane concerns. And then they complain about how long they have to wait to be treated! Absurd.
Six hours sounds like a pretty typical waiting time for a minor injury, I’m sorry to say. That was my last experience, accompanying a friend with a head injury to a hospital here in Edmonton. Is it a perfect system? Absolutely not. Ought waiting times be a serious government priority? Definitely yes.
I think your lesson learned is a good one, though, even if you did style it as a complaint. Your story will assist others in thinking twice about making the hospital their first stop for every minor cut, bruise or scrape — which is a good thing.
April 9th, 2008 at 6:28 am
I have to say - after having worked in several ER’s (as a Nurse) and having worked at Sick Kids, that what I find the most frustrating is the people that come to the ER with non emergent issues. Honestly, it costs the government 280.00 just to register in the ER. The prices go up from there. Then people come for “quick fixes” even though they may have been treated in another facility/clinic like this family.
Have you ever stopped to consider that there is a huge shortage of nurses, yet we cannot turn anyone away - even if we know they shouldn’t have wasted our time and theirs coming to the ER? We sometimes work all night without breaks, and without food, because the ER is filled with 60-70% of patients who are WASTING OUR TIME!!!
Sick Kids gets children from all over the world! They have the second highest acuity in the world and perform procedures that no other hospitals do. They have true emergencies dozens of times each shift. A pulled elbow - especially one that was already seen and xrayed and found NOT to be broken, is very low in the queue and to suggest the hospital is bad for that reason just goes to show how ignorant some people are.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Here we go. Out come the fierce defences of Sick Kids. Who are we to besmirch the sacred reputation of the sacrosanct Sick Kids? Let us all go and bow down before the precious institution and utter no blasphemous comments that might in any way suggest any sort of complaint about the ‘world class’ Hospital for Sick Children.
Hogwash!!
I, for one, _HATE_ the ‘precious’ Hospital for Sick Children. I will never, ever give them my support or respect.
I brought my son there several times for both acute and non-acute illnesses and was patronized and talked down to, each and every time. It wasn’t that I had to wait, the staff and clinicians were incredibly unprofessional and incompetent. My mother is an RN who worked in pediatrics for over 30 years, in hospital, and she was appalled. I was given incredibly bad direction and treatment advice. So, by the time he was critically ill and treatment from Sick Kids was going absolutely nowhere, in fact, from bad to worse, I said F you to Sick Kids and its precious ‘world-class’ treatment facility and went to the US for treatment. There the clinicians weren’t stuck on themselves and their standing in the medical community. They actually, GASP!, examined the patient and then treated him appropriately. No condescension, no snarky comments, no ‘well that’s not how we do it here’ attitude. My son is now recovered, no thanks to Sick Kids.
So, don’t give me this crap about taking kids from all over the province and the world and about it being a leader. How about that kid from Vietnam who had the growth on his face that Sick Kids chose not to treat. There was hell to pay because a second opinion was suggested. Then doctors at a Boston area children’s hospital actually undertook to help the kid. I watched that case with interest and was exceedingly glad that they chose to take that child to the US for treatment. At least there, they dared to treat him.
And so the doctors in the US dared to treat my son. For what my son needed to be treated for, Sick Kids is literally in the dark ages and the treatment we received in the U.S. is light years ahead. (and I’ll argue till I’m blue faced with anyone who says that Sick Kids and Canadian health care is better than the U.S. - because in our case it was definitely not the truth).
And it’s really a galling shame too. Because if you have a kid that has something acutely wrong with them, some rare disease, needs something reconstructed, transplanted, a bone set, etc, then, I’ll grudgingly admit, yeah, it probably can’t be beat. But, if you have a child who has a chronic disease, then forget it. And further, if you have a child who has a disease that the medical establishment refuses to admit they caused, even worse for you.
Sick Kids claims to be ‘world leaders’ in pediatrics, but from what I’ve seen, they fail miserably.