"Tina" wrote in message
om...
Does anyone else think it's exceptionally slow to wait three and a
half hours after a head injury with symptoms (sleeping, uneven gait,
pain moving around her head) in a child with a bleeding disorder to
get a catscan? I'm still angry (obviously), but I don't know how
angry to get, if I complain. That nurse definitely lied, I know that
for sure.

I agree with everyone that 3.5 hours seems like far too long to have to wait
to be seen after an incident like this, particularly if the child has a
known clotting disorder. OTOH, I have to say that my experience suggests
it's not at all uncommon and might even be normal.

When Julian cut his finger open with a pair of scissors on a Sunday, we too
him to the ER. It was very busy, and we eventually ended up going to an
urgent care center because the wait was 6+ hours. However, it was an hour
(and maybe 1.5 hours) before we were even triaged. And during that hour, we
met a couple with a son a little over than Solana who'd had a garden tool
fall on his head at a local home improvement warehouse. He had a significant
laceration on the top of his head and had been exhibiting other potential
symptoms of concussion/brain-bleed like Solana (sleepiness, nausea). They
had been there at 3 hours by the time we met them and they had still not
been seen by the doctor when we left, so they must have waited a good 4
hours before they were seen!

Similarly, when we went to the ER after Julian broke his arm, we waited a
good 6 hours and during that time, I met a woman whose son was exhibiting
symptoms of meningitis and he had not been seen in over 2 hours!

The problem, as I understand it, is that the ER's are *way* understaffed.
Even if they have rooms available, they don't have enough doctors and nurses
to care for people occupying them. So they really have to do their best to
figure out which cases are truly critical and which can wait a little longer
without being life-threatening. Another think you have to remember is that
you don't know whether any truly serious and life-threatening cases came in
via ambulance. (That's the way I arrived at the ER, and I bypassed the
triage nurses altogether so people waiting in the waiting room didn't even
know I was there.)

All of that said, I think the nurse in your case made a mistake when
triaging Solana and classified the seriousness of her case incorrectly. I
think it would probably be a good idea to carry with you some sort of
information from her hematologist explaining her clotting disorder and that
any time she has an injury which might be associated with bleeding, she
needs to be treated as considerably more "critical" than the average child
with a similar injury. I also think when you feel you're getting the
brush-off, it never hurts to say something like, "I understand that you are
very busy, but I feel my child's condition is more critical than you are
suggesting. I am willing to wait, but I want it understood that if my child
suffers harm because you did not take my concerns seriously, I *will* bring
a lawsuit for medical malpractice." I hate it that I believe I have to
threaten lawsuits to get action, but it *does* tend to get attention!
--
Be well, Barbara
(Julian [6], Aurora [4], and Vernon's [18mo] mom)
See us at http://photos.yahoo.com/guavaln

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