"Lack of interest from staff"

My child was taken in by ambulance to your Emergency Department (ED) with multiple seizures, on the advice of a neurologist in Melbourne. While waiting on the ambo stretcher they had another 4 seizures, lasting around a minute each.

The ambo’s were great, keeping a very close eye on all the obs and my child, asking hospital staff if they could look so they could see what kind of seizure my child was having. In my opinion, it seemed there was little to no interest in this, which I believe, even surprised the ambo’s. After approx 20 minutes, the ambo’s cleaned a bed, made it up and put my child on it, they then had an ECG and drip put in and was left while the neurologist was consulted.

I went to get a drink and returned to find my child fitting very strongly and even though they were right in front of a full nurses station, who, in my opinion, only seemed interested in typing on computers and chatting, didn’t notice. I called for help, to which there was a very slow response and a general lack of interest, in my opinion.

After this, they administered an IV drug for the seizures as advised by the neurologist which seemed to send my child off their head. I believe they were seeing things and seemed very agitated. My child was yelling and wanting to leave, me and my spouse were holding them telling them they needed to stay and this is where my biggest worry is; how poorly your staff reacted, how unprepared and untrained in dealing with a full-blown mental breakdown right in front of their eyes, to the point where they all just disappeared, leaving us to try and deal with it.

When we were all but begging for help, my spouse crying, my child yelling; all your doctor could say was, we can’t make them stay. Your very junior nurse, who at least tried to help, saying, it’s difficult, neither wanting to call any sort of mental health professional. In my opinion, none of the staff seemed to know how to deal with this at all and in this age of being all about mental health and mental health issues, I felt, was the most disappointing and heartbreaking result I could imagine.

At no time did my child threaten, abuse or touch any of your staff and I feel that your training and strategies need urgent reviewing of this matter. Neither I or my spouse have any experience with mental health and this was my child’s first mental health breakdown.