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"Treatment in emergency department and wrong sample sent"

About: Wonthaggi Hospital / Emergency Department

(as a parent/guardian),

We attended the emergency department at Bass Coast Health because my child had been unwell with a fever for 48+ hours (tested and was covid neg) and they had severe abdominal cramps, diarrhoea and had started passing frank blood in their stools.

After producing a specimen for the doctor to view I recall they used the words, can you show me what you think is blood, followed by, I am not convinced. This made me feel like my roll as a parent was to convince them of what was happening.

The nursing staff who dealt with us were lovely, they did a FWT (full ward test) on my child's urine sample that showed blood and protein (likely contaminated). Both stool and urine sample were sent off for testing and it was requested that we follow up with a GP.

We were interested to see what had caused my child to be unwell as we had not been any where due to lockdowns and my other two children were well.

We followed up with a GP a few days later who called for results from the lab only to be told that the stool sample was collected in the wrong sample pot and that it had been discarded 😳😳😳 the urine sample had grown a bug (but the GP and I decided it was likely contaminated) so we basically had to start again.

Fortunately my child improved but I was disappointed with the experience.  

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Responses

Response from Jan Child, CEO, Bass Coast Health 2 years ago
Jan Child
CEO,
Bass Coast Health
Submitted on 10/10/2021 at 8:47 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 11/10/2021 at 9:44 AM


picture of Jan Child

Dear importerxy47,

I understand why you were disappointed. From what you tell me, it sounds as though you didn't feel heard, and that your observations weren't valued. And it sounds like we didn't do well on the samples.

I would very much like to follow up on these issues with the team involved. I wonder if you would be happy to either call or text me on 0472846355 so that we can review your child's medical history and we can speak to the staff involved. I know that it is a particularly tough time in healthcare at the moment but your feedback is critical in us making sure we continually improve what we do. I am very sorry that you had this experience, and I am very grateful that you took the time to provide us with this feedback. I hope your family, and your child in particular, are all ok.

Kind Regards, Jan

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