"Care in the emergency department"

My infant caught a cough off their older sibling (winter things 🙄) & after seeing our local family dr who I feel is amazing, the antibiotics worked a dream for the older sibling but didn’t really help my infant.

On a weeknight we took my infant to hospital as I noticed them pulling in when they were breathing & had the tracheal tug. You can actually hear them working harder to pull in air in one of the videos I took. We were told by a nurse that our infant's breathing looked fine… I believe it was far from fine. After presenting & being asked if their milk intake was normal & continued having wet nappies (which both were still fine) they were fine to go home just had to monitor their breathing. Before going home the dr came to do my infant's obs. They said “oh they were only done 15 minutes ago I don’t need to do them again”.

My infant's cough kept us up most of the night which is a given..

The next day their breathing seemed to worsen so off we went back to hospital. We were told by a nurse when asked if they could have an RSV swab, I recall, “no we don’t do them here”. I believe this wasn't true, as I recall other people have had RVS swabs done. The DR then came in & what were they able to do? An RSV swab. They said it would take 24-48 hours for results as they get sent to Melbourne. This was fine. We were also told on the second night by the DR who was reading my infant's notes from the night before that they did a covid test on them the first night we came in. This was not the case at all. My infant never had a covid test done. I feel like they just ticked the box as done so it was one less thing they had to do. 

They checked my infant's oxygen levels whilst in there and they were fine (thankfully)

No phone call from the hospital for results. So I called them, I recall I was told “no sorry those results won’t come back for a week” I told them “the DR said they take 24-48 hours” they still insisted that the doctor ordered the wrong swabs and they would take a week. I was then put on hold & once taken off hold I was on the phone to a DR who told me the results did in fact come back and my infant does have RSV.

We are so thankful that they are still feeding & weeing like normal & that their oxygen levels are fine and they don't need anything else. Their cough & breathing are getting better as they are such a little trooper!

I posted this purely for the fact that as a parent I believe you need to fight for your children with no voice. To seemingly be lied straight to our face saying they do not do RSV swabs when in fact they do scares the hell out of me especially in cases that I believe could be so much worse than my infant's.

A massive thank you to the DR on the second night who I felt actually listed to us & took all the precautions to make sure my infant was getting the care they needed.

I appreciate everything all Doctors & Nurses do as their job would be mighty hard & I know a lot of them who I feel are amazing at what they do, my parent being one of them. Sometimes I think children & babies need to be taken a little more seriously when presenting to the ED by the smaller percentage who I feel make us feel like we need to push so heard to be heard.