“…he had a lack of appetite, weakness, fatigue and severe dizziness, and these symptoms were getting worse…”
“…he had Covid, and, while the fever went away after a week, the toddler never fully bounced back…”
“…he came down with RSV (respiratory syncytial virus). Although common, RSV was particularly virulent that year because it hadn’t been circulating as much during the lockdown years…”
”…Eventually, the doctors confirmed Micah had an enlarged heart and blood clots on his liver…”
”…A blood clot had travelled to Micah’s lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism. His heart had stopped beating and they couldn’t revive him. Nothing could be done…”
Wow, that’s so sad.
Stories like this make me very glad that I got my pediatric experience in a good children’s hospital before starting medical school. The attending physicians made sure to drill it into everyone’s heads that if the parent is expressing concern about a change in condition or “something just not being right”, you report that to the patient’s physician and nurse ASAP. Everyone from the physicians down to the admin folks were empowered to challenge decisions they thought weren’t in the patient’s best interest.
Hell, I even had a case where, as the ER tech, I challenged a physician on her diagnosis of a child and refused to let her discharge the kiddo without looking at him again. The mom told me something was wrong, and even with just an EMT license, I was able to see something was subtly wrong as well. It turns out the mom and I were right and the physician changed her diagnosis and admitted him to the hospital for treatment instead of discharging him home to follow up in clinic in a couple days.
Thank you for your advocacy! Agree its a whole team involved in patient care
99.99% of parents over react to their children’s “illness”.
That doesn’t mean you ignore them. You listen to what they’re saying, maybe take it with a grain of salt, and actually get a good history and physical.
Never suggested ignoring, more about how you filter through it all.
You have to be very careful about “filtering” as well. It becomes far too easy to write off a legitimate concern if it has to pass muster with your “filter” before you consider it. The HPI and subjective portions of a note are explicitly for the things the patient (or their caretaker) tells you. It is subjective. Then you do your objective examination and testing, then you make an assessment, and if you can justify that assessment with the testing and history, then you can make a plan. SOAP notes go in that order for a reason.
This is straight up medical negligence. You seriously mean to tell me at no point did any of these doctors just order up simple lab work to confirm that there was nothing wrong while placating the mother? Every hospital I’ve ever worked in has an unwritten policy that if you come into the ER you’re getting basic blood work and a urinalysis if only to prevent malpractice suits. I truly believe that COVID irreparably broke the already disfunctional for-profit healthcare system here in the US and with every story like this I lose hope that it will ever be fixed.
You very rarely get blood work at a US ER unless there’s an extra reason to need bloodwork.
Which I’m not against. It’s dumb to have blood work done for every er patient.
It’s true. User fees break things.
And once again, the American healthcare system kills a patient…
* profitcare system
Doesn’t deserve the word “care” either. They don’t care for shit. They discharge you and leave you unable to care for yourself without any help.
They care about profits.
Very much so.
Well no. While that does happen often. Failing to save someone isn’t causing their death.
In this specific case, they simply failed to save someone they could have. Nothing they did was the cause of this kids death.
The difference is, if the mother kept the kid home, it would have all played out the same.
When the healthcare system kills someone. They would have survived if they stayed home. Or at least died of something different.Nothing they did was the cause of this kids death
How can you say this with a straight face. Their inaction caused this kid’s death. Inaction is a choice.
What about the illness? Was that not the cause?
Do tell me though, how could the illness get so bad?
That’s what they do. Some anyway.
Heart disease is still considered a leading cause of death. Or is it doctors not curing heart disease, that’s the leading cause now?
Failing to save someone’s life, implies they made decisions in an attempt to save the life. That they tried, and were unsuccessful.
But in this case, they made decisions which directly prevented Micah from receiving the tests that would have given them the opportunity to save his life.
The decision, and action, to dissuade Micah’s mother from seeking further medical care directly lead to his death. The decision, and action, to discharge him without adequate testing directly lead to his death.
The ER team on the third visit sounds to have tried and failed to save his life, even the decision to wait for blood thinners until more thorough testing was likely correct since they were most likely unaware of the risk of the formation of blood clots in the child.
The primary care doctor and the first ER team negligently made a series of decisions and actions that allowed a child to have an illness go undetected until it became fatal. They had the training and knowledge to know how serious the symptoms reported were and that the child’s recovery was not in line with the illness they had initially diagnosed him. They may have had procedures they didn’t follow which if they had would have prevented Micah death. If those are identified, then yes, I would say they caused his death through inaction.
Does it rise to criminality? No. But it’s likely malpractice.
It certainly is malpractice. They fucked up, and should be held accountable for those mistakes.
But if a person doesn’t stop something, they had no part in starting, it doesn’t make sense to say they “caused” the result.
It’s really just that simple.
Hypothetically, you’re a bridge inspector. Someone reports a bridge in your area has problems and should be looked at. It’s part of your job to inspect bridges that have reports filed. You go “look at” the bridge but don’t inspect because “99% of reports are fake”. The bridge collapses killing someone.
Did you cause the death?
No. You failed to prevent it.
Inaction can be causative. For example, to simplify the scenario into the trolley problem, with one person on the current track, and no people on the other track, if you choose not to pull the lever, you have caused that person’s death.
I’m specifically saying that’s not true. You failed to prevent the death.
Even with the lever being a working break. You’d be correctly blamed for it. But you still didn’t cause it.
Failure to fulfill a “what if” scenario you imagined, doesn’t create a cause.
Failing to save someone isn’t causing their death.
Unless your job is to save them and doing your job right would have saved them, but you chose not to do your job right.
if the mother kept the kid home, it would have all played out the same
So you agree the doctors were useless in this case.
So you agree the doctors were useless in this case.
I agree they had no effect in this case.
They failed to serve their intended use. That may be worse than useless, because it comes with unfulfilled hope. Rather than offering no hope at all, with something that actually useless.
What an absolute nightmare 😢
