What Should Have Happened:
An eighteen year old girl, an adult according to law, is admitted to the hospital for tests and follow up for severe abdominal pain. Initial tests lead the doctors to consider kidney stones. Days go by, the symptoms remain, the doctors reassess their initial diagnosis, order more tests and ultimately arrive at the correct diagnosis, treat the girl and send her home to fully heal.
What Could Have Happened:
The eighteen year old patient’s mother, unhappy with the delay in treatment and concerned with her daughter’s progress decides to find a second opinion at a different hospital.Dissatisfied but rational she arranges transportation to a different facility, or takes her child herself in the mini van. The patient is ultimately diagnosed, treated and sent home to heal, days later than if she had stayed in the first hospital but none the worse for wear.
What Might Have Happened:
The eighteen year-old patient’s mother, dissatisfied with hospital A decides to make a scene, drag her sick child out of bed, storm out of the hospital. call 911 and wait for the ambulance drivers to take her child to her hospital of choice. The ambulance drivers show up, spit and polished, calm the mother, carry the patient from the mini-van to the ambulance, start an IV, administer oxygen comfort her and take her to the next hospital.
What I wish Happened:
Rescue 1 responds for a woman ill at the door of Hospital A. Upon arrival they discover a very sick eighteen year old sitting in a mini-van, pale, diaphoretic and just plain looking awful, and an out of control mother outside of the mini-van demanding her daughter be taken to Hospital B.
The crew from Rescue 1 has the hysterical woman held by police for creating a public disturbance, takes the sick eighteen year old away from the chaos, puts her in the rescue and takes her to the emergency department of the same hospital.
What Actually Happened:
Rescue 1 responds to Hospital A. Hysterical woman demands to be taken to different hospital. Rescue 1 tells woman it’s a free country she can go where she wants. Hysterical woman demands rescue 1 take her. Rescue 1 asks if shs is crazy, or something like that. The eighteen year old sits in the back of mini van, sick and miserable, waiting for somebody to put an end to this maddness. Mother decides to finish this, abruptly gets in the van, slams the door and speeds out of the hospital parking lot without her lights on.
Rescue 1 goes back in service.
Wish I had a Mulligan.
Hope our new Chief wasn’t watching us, clipboard in hand…