"Suspected influenza"

My infant grandchild presented to the Accident and Emergency Department at Sale Hospital recently with flu-like symptoms. They were taken to the hospital by their parent (my child) who began texting me to keep me updated as I was worried. Later that day, my child said that they had put their baby in a room, assigned them a student doctor and hadn’t done anything to treat them, not even administered Panadol.

My child reported that the student doctor had no idea about babies and seemed unable to make decisions about anything. They also reported their baby had deteriorated greatly and they were extremely worried about them. I left work and went to see them at the hospital. I found my child and grandchild in a room by themselves, and my grandchild was barely able to wake up, was limp and was struggling to breathe. My child said they had literally just given the baby Panadol before I arrived. By this time my child had been there with their baby for around 2 hours, possibly longer.

As you can imagine with all the influenza related deaths in recent months, and seeing my baby grandchild so extremely ill, I did lose my temper. I went straight out to the triage nurse to find out what was happening and in my panic I was quite abusive. I reminded them about my grandchild's age and lack of ability to fend for themselves, how incredibly sick they were and how much they had deteriorated since they had been there. I then told the nurse that they would be held accountable if anything happened and reminded then that they had a duty of care to treat my grandchild according to their needs. Within two minutes my grandchild had been assigned a head doctor. Within 15 minutes a paediatrician had been to see them. And within around an hour, they had been admitted to the children’s ward.

After my outburst, I spent a great deal of time apologising to staff and expressing my embarrassment at my behaviour. This is something I would absolutely never usually do. But on reflection, I have come to the conclusion that it was required at the time. My grandchild had not been cared for properly. They had not been treated properly. And as a most vulnerable member of society in a very dangerous situation, they had in fact been let down by the medical staff who had been entrusted with their care. It is not good enough that a tiny baby with suspected influenza be left alone in a room with not even so much as Panadol to treat them or to be looked after by this student doctor who had absolutely no idea about babies.

I am glad that I did what I did. I am sorry to that triage nurse who didn’t deserve it. But in hindsight, I would do the same again to protect an innocent child who isn’t being cared for by those who are being paid to care for them. What a sad state of affairs that myself, as such a kind and caring individual had to resort to such extreme measures to get my grandchild the treatment that they deserved. My grandchild ended up being diagnosed with HSV virus which is common in children and can make them quite ill. It’s not as serious as influenza but they had no idea what was wrong with them that day, and they let them down dramatically by taking so long to treat their case so seriously. Let’s hope that next time the consequences aren’t worse for the next baby.