Whyte Noise
Senior Member
What is the name of your state? Georgia
This may be lengthy, but I want to get all pertinant details in.
Friday, July 13th I took my daughter to the local ER when she was complaining of severe abdominal pain. Upon arriving, she was triaged at 12:05 AM Saturday the 14th.
Taken to the back, examined and given Phenegran, GI ****tail, and 10mg Morphine. After an hour she was still in pain, abdomen tender to the touch. ER doc decided to do an abdominal CT. She was then given 2mg Dilautid for pain, more Phenegran, and Protonix. Also drank a huge glass of orange tasting dye for the CT. CT results were enlarged liver and spleen.
Doctor diagnosed her with gastoenteritis and discharged her with a prescription for Prilosec; abdominal pain and tenderness still present.
In the next 30 minutes she vomited 3 times so I returned to the ER with her. Doctor decided to transfer her to a facility with a hospital (Our hospital in Americus was destroyed in a tornado back in March, so the ER is a mobile unit basically and no hospital here to admit to).
Daughter transported by ambulance to facility 45 miles away (in Albany), arriving at around 8:30 AM and assigned a doctor there. She was admitted straight to the peds unit. Doctor came around about 10 AM, daughter still sleepy from the Dilautid yet still in pain and tender to the touch. Doctor basically gets a history, reads ER chart and tells me that he wants her to come off the pain meds completely to see if she's still having pain and that if she's not he will discharge her the next morning.
That afternoon daughter complains of pain so I go to see if she can get pain meds. Doctor didn't order any pain meds for her. Daughter continues in pain through the afternoon and night.
The next morning, husband and I go downstairs to get breakfast. When we come back up and step off the elevator, the nurse at the nurses desk tells us daughter is going home. Husband asks if doctor has made rounds, we are told yes. Get to daughter's room and she tells us the doctor hasn't been in to see her. Go back out to nurses station and tell the nurse that daughter didn't see the doctor. She replies that he "Stuck his head in the door and thought she was in the shower", and wrote the discharge orders. We ask if we can speak to the doctor and are told he's already left the hospital.
His "official" diagnosis on that discharge order is "abdominal pain". Well, really even I knew that, it's why I took her to the ER to begin with.
This doctor examined her once on the date of admission (7/14), and then discharged her the next morning (7/15) without seeing her or speaking to my husband or myself.
There's more to the story, but but basically I ended up taking her to another ER in a different town (Montezuma) on 7/15 because of continued pain where admitted her once again as inpatient. They ran an abdominal US and found her liver enlarged, spleen enlarged, kidneys enlarged, and pancreas enlarged. She saw her PCP there, who then transferred her on 7/17 to another facility in Columbus to see a gastroenterologist and an endocrinologist. At that facility they did a pelvic US and found cysts on her right ovary. Her final diagnosis was/is pancreatitis and ovarian cysts which would explain her level of pain and the tenderness. She was discharged from that facility on 7/19.
My question is - did the doctor at the first hospital where she was admitted as an inpatient who discharged her without even seeing her that morning follow the accepted standard of care while she was under his care? She was still in pain upon discharge (when he said that if she was not in pain he'd discharge her the next day), he only examined her once and that was on admission, he didn't order any pain meds whatsoever (which to me doesn't jive with the patients rights of "having pain assesed and managed"), he didn't speak to either my husband or myself or my daughter again, and my daughter had to endure more pain plus trips and admissions to two other hospitals over the next 4 days.
I don't know if it's relevent, but daughter has a complex medical history including diabetes (insulin dependant), kidney disease, the enlarged liver (which I knew about before they did the CT at the first ER but the enlarged spleen was new), proteinuria (creatinine clearance was over 12 grams), high triglycerides (current test was over 1500mg), and recurrent nosebleeds of unknown origin (cauterization didn't help, and she has to have a CT done on her sinuses for that).
I've been around these boards for a while, and no I'm not looking to sue anyone. I just personally feel that my daughter was given the brush-off at the first hospital by that doctor and that if he'd done more than see her on admission and then discharge her the next day she wouldn't have had to undergo 2 more hospital stays and tests at those facilities to find out what was wrong. The hospital she was in had the capabilities to run the same tests the other 2 hospitals did, had the same specialists she was eventually seen by, yet... he did nothing for her.
This may be lengthy, but I want to get all pertinant details in.
Friday, July 13th I took my daughter to the local ER when she was complaining of severe abdominal pain. Upon arriving, she was triaged at 12:05 AM Saturday the 14th.
Taken to the back, examined and given Phenegran, GI ****tail, and 10mg Morphine. After an hour she was still in pain, abdomen tender to the touch. ER doc decided to do an abdominal CT. She was then given 2mg Dilautid for pain, more Phenegran, and Protonix. Also drank a huge glass of orange tasting dye for the CT. CT results were enlarged liver and spleen.
Doctor diagnosed her with gastoenteritis and discharged her with a prescription for Prilosec; abdominal pain and tenderness still present.
In the next 30 minutes she vomited 3 times so I returned to the ER with her. Doctor decided to transfer her to a facility with a hospital (Our hospital in Americus was destroyed in a tornado back in March, so the ER is a mobile unit basically and no hospital here to admit to).
Daughter transported by ambulance to facility 45 miles away (in Albany), arriving at around 8:30 AM and assigned a doctor there. She was admitted straight to the peds unit. Doctor came around about 10 AM, daughter still sleepy from the Dilautid yet still in pain and tender to the touch. Doctor basically gets a history, reads ER chart and tells me that he wants her to come off the pain meds completely to see if she's still having pain and that if she's not he will discharge her the next morning.
That afternoon daughter complains of pain so I go to see if she can get pain meds. Doctor didn't order any pain meds for her. Daughter continues in pain through the afternoon and night.
The next morning, husband and I go downstairs to get breakfast. When we come back up and step off the elevator, the nurse at the nurses desk tells us daughter is going home. Husband asks if doctor has made rounds, we are told yes. Get to daughter's room and she tells us the doctor hasn't been in to see her. Go back out to nurses station and tell the nurse that daughter didn't see the doctor. She replies that he "Stuck his head in the door and thought she was in the shower", and wrote the discharge orders. We ask if we can speak to the doctor and are told he's already left the hospital.
His "official" diagnosis on that discharge order is "abdominal pain". Well, really even I knew that, it's why I took her to the ER to begin with.
This doctor examined her once on the date of admission (7/14), and then discharged her the next morning (7/15) without seeing her or speaking to my husband or myself.
There's more to the story, but but basically I ended up taking her to another ER in a different town (Montezuma) on 7/15 because of continued pain where admitted her once again as inpatient. They ran an abdominal US and found her liver enlarged, spleen enlarged, kidneys enlarged, and pancreas enlarged. She saw her PCP there, who then transferred her on 7/17 to another facility in Columbus to see a gastroenterologist and an endocrinologist. At that facility they did a pelvic US and found cysts on her right ovary. Her final diagnosis was/is pancreatitis and ovarian cysts which would explain her level of pain and the tenderness. She was discharged from that facility on 7/19.
My question is - did the doctor at the first hospital where she was admitted as an inpatient who discharged her without even seeing her that morning follow the accepted standard of care while she was under his care? She was still in pain upon discharge (when he said that if she was not in pain he'd discharge her the next day), he only examined her once and that was on admission, he didn't order any pain meds whatsoever (which to me doesn't jive with the patients rights of "having pain assesed and managed"), he didn't speak to either my husband or myself or my daughter again, and my daughter had to endure more pain plus trips and admissions to two other hospitals over the next 4 days.
I don't know if it's relevent, but daughter has a complex medical history including diabetes (insulin dependant), kidney disease, the enlarged liver (which I knew about before they did the CT at the first ER but the enlarged spleen was new), proteinuria (creatinine clearance was over 12 grams), high triglycerides (current test was over 1500mg), and recurrent nosebleeds of unknown origin (cauterization didn't help, and she has to have a CT done on her sinuses for that).
I've been around these boards for a while, and no I'm not looking to sue anyone. I just personally feel that my daughter was given the brush-off at the first hospital by that doctor and that if he'd done more than see her on admission and then discharge her the next day she wouldn't have had to undergo 2 more hospital stays and tests at those facilities to find out what was wrong. The hospital she was in had the capabilities to run the same tests the other 2 hospitals did, had the same specialists she was eventually seen by, yet... he did nothing for her.
She'll be seeing him on a regular basis now too. She was diagnosed with diabetes at age 12, and she'll be 15 in September.