"Broken ankle"

Recently we went to Busselton hospital with our child who had hurt their ankle in a rugby accident the day previous. The ankle was huge, bruised and unable to bare any weight.

We didn’t wait for very long which was a nice surprise and the young lady at the initial desk was so lovely and easy to talk to. She had a look at the ankle, gave my child pain relief and took all the details of the accident as well as our personal details.

We got called in and saw another staff member who looked at the ankle, poked and proded it and said it was ligament damage. I asked about an xray to be told that where the pain is there is no bones so it’s a ligament that is causing the problem. I believe the staff member wasn’t interested in watching the video of the incident and gave them a compression bandage and crutches. The advice we were given was to rest, evelvate and ice.

We left within 5 mins of going in.

Days later my child still can not put any weight on their foot so I made a doctor appointment for back in Perth. When we returned we saw the gp who said it probably was a ligament but they were sending us for an xray and ultrasound to be sure. We went off to the xray etc the next morning - when we could get an appointment to be told my child had 3 fractures in their ankle and we needed to go to emergency straight away.

My child ended up having to have surgery and a screw put in to their ankle. They had 3 breaks in their ankle. It went through their growth plate.

In my opinion, the xray was very obvious.

I am so disappointed that the Busselton hospital didn’t do an xray. I feel it should be done as a precaution regardless. My child’s ankle was so swollen it was very obvious something was wrong and we had video of the incident showing the twist of the foot and then 2 grown people falling on it.

As their parent I feel like I let my child down by not pushing for more tests. I feel guilty that they had a broken ankle for several days before getting the surgery their needed. I feel guilty that it may affect my child long term as I believe they had started healing before we knew all of this. I feel angry that it seemed people didn’t do their jobs properly and this could have a long term impact on a minor. I feel a lack of trust in the medical system.