"Disappointing Care"

Earlier in the year, just before school resumed. I took my two young children to our local skate park. They were riding their scooters with helmets on. My eldest child had a fall and smashed their face into the concrete. Upon first look I could see their 4 front teeth were broken and dangling from their gum. They were in excruciating pain. I immediately loaded everything into the car and went to the hospital. We went to the triage nurse and I believe they told me that they were busy and we had to wait. In my opinion you could visibly see how much pain my child was in, I believe it even made the other patients in the waiting room uncomfortable that we were sent away to wait. I sat in the adjacent waiting room to the entrance so we could be alone and I could try and calm my child down without an audience. 

After a few minutes, I decided to move back to the triage desk. The nurse was not there. The double doors opened and a nurse called out another patient's name. That nurse took one look at my child and told us to follow them. They put us in the paediatric triage room. The initial triage nurse walked past and, I believe, rolled their eyes asking why we were in there as they had a baby. This made me feel extremely frustrated and hurt that it seems my child's obvious injuries weren't a priority. Obviously a baby is important, I completely respect that, but I feel we didn't need that response.

We waited for over an hour to see a doctor. My child had still not received any pain relief. For reference, at this time, the state was going in to lockdown due to a covid outbreak. I believe the staff were trying to prepare for an influx on covid tests etc. This meant that we were, in my opinion, obviously pushed down the priority list.

A doctor finally came to see us, it was a junior doctor, in their first week of working at Kalgoorlie hospital as I understand it. I reminded myself everyone has to start somewhere. They were, I feel, visibly nervous and wasn't sure what to do. A senior doctor came and inspected my child's mouth. This doctor made my child rinse it and tried to convince them to take pain relief orally. Obviously, I believe this was a ridiculous request seeing as half my child's front teeth were hanging out of their mouth. The doctor then decided to give my child some pain relief via their nose. This settled them down immediately and made them tired.

My child was then sent for an x-ray. A new senior doctor came in. As I understand it, they told the junior doctor that they shouldn't have given my child the nasal pain relief as the liquid that was coming out of my child's nose could have been fluid from the brain and until my child had had an x-ray and CT scan that shouldn't have happened. Obviously that made me feel really uncomfortable.

The x-ray came back and the senior doctor said it looked like my child had a fractured jaw. So my child went to have a CT scan. We waited until the evening for the results. In the meantime my child had not had any food or drink for 11 hours, no more pain relief and no drip or fluids. The evening there was shift change, and the NUM (Nurse Unit Manager) I believe, was very upset at the way my child had been treated.

I feel the nurse caring for us was amazing and was advocating for a drip. The senior doctor came in with the results of the CT scan and said that there was no fracture and we could go home. I was absolutely gobsmacked, as were, I believe, the nursing staff. My child could not eat, or drink or have any pain relief and they wanted to send us home? We refused. The paediatric doctor came and saw us and said we could stay in children's ward and be reviewed by the paeds team in the morning. The senior doctor was adamant it was a dental issue now, and not a medical one. I am sure, in my opinion, the inability to eat or drink is a medical issue.

I felt the staff at the kids ward were amazing. They continued to try and get my child to take pain relief orally. But my child was in so much pain they couldn't. We were reviewed by the paeds team the following morning and they were not going to send us to PCH (Perth Children's Hospital) as they said they'd shut down the dental department due to the covid lockdown. I believe this was a lie. They had shut down the non-emergency procedures. I'm fairly certain trauma to the teeth and gum was an emergency. It was extremely distressing to feel we weren't being supported or heard.

A junior paed doctor came back in and said if we were private patients, then to find a private dentist. We looked one up, and I felt they were amazing. Could see from photos I took that my child had de-gloved their gum, and it was detached from the bone. The dentist said that my child needed to come immediately to prevent infection.

The dentist said that there was no way my child would have been able to eat or drink as the trauma to their mouth was so severe any movement, even just adjusting their gum, would have been painful. This made us infuriated. That our child had to go through such pain, for I felt, seemingly no reason. We flew to Perth the next day, day 3. And that afternoon my child was operated on. We paid thousands of dollars for that care, that I believe the hospital should have provided. In my opinion, this is not acceptable and no child should be treated the way we were.