"The Dr’s behaviour towards my child"

My partner and I took our young toddler into the local emergency department, to get checked mostly as a precaution after a small incident.

We were greeted with a lovely nurse at triage and was told to wait, which was fine.

We go in to get our child checked by the Dr - one we haven’t met before. All was fine until the Dr started to examine our child’s body. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary from what I was witnessing however my child started screaming in fear. I know the way my child cries/screams when they are afraid and this was it to the point they were hyperventilating and screaming. Now this is where my issue lies.

Unlike you’d assume most people would do, which would be to lower your voice and talk calmly and give the child space - this Dr raised their voice to the point I’d describe it as yelling as they spoke to us and advised us it was okay to head home. The Dr didn’t give my child space whilst I held them and I had to remove my child from being close to them as my child was visibly distressed by this Dr. I recll the Dr continued to yell ‘Bye bye bye’ in a seemingly very unfriendly, abrupt manner as we left the room. Enough, I believe, to make any adult think ‘what the heck?!’.

I’m unsure if it was a complete lack of bedside manner skills or understanding of young children, or if the Dr was offended they’d made my young child upset and raised their voice in a passive aggressive way. Either way, the Dr made us as parents feel very uncomfortable and upset over the experience and very visibly upset my child to a great extent and didn’t seem to feel the need to defuse the situation, but instead escalated their behaviour to be more extreme.

I understand young children cry at things easily, but I felt it was the way the Dr dealt with it that was disappointing and quite frankly, disturbing.