Doctor fails severely dehydrated baby, parents allege
The parents of a severely dehydrated baby say a doctor told them to drive to another hospital 100 kilometres away if they did not want to take the child home.
Westport parents Lisa Milligan and Bill Sullivan, whose 8-weekold son Holden was seriously ill from gastroenteritis, rushed to Greymouth, during which time the baby started ‘‘fading away’’.
Milligan began flicking him in the face to make sure he was still conscious. By the time they got to Grey Base Hospital the boy was grey and unresponsive, his eyes sunken and rolling back in his head. Grey Base Hospital staff wrote in the medical notes, seen by The Press, they deemed the baby’s condition on arrival ‘‘imminently life-threatening’’.
‘‘I don’t think he would have lasted much longer. It was touch and go. I was flashing people to pull over and let us pass. I was actually hoping to meet a cop so he could escort us. When we got to Greymouth, it was like something on TV. The doctors and nurses just got onto him straight away,’’ Sullivan said.
Milligan and Sullivan believe the Grey Base medical team saved the boy’s life. They have lodged a
complaint with the Health and Disability Commissioner’s office about the Westport doctor’s actions last Thursday.
They claim the doctor told them they could not stay at Buller Hospital, in Westport, and he would not be on call that night because he would be playing cards.
‘‘He said ‘We don’t cater for children or babies and you can go home or go to Greymouth for monitoring’. I asked if he’d be all right while we drove him to Greymouth without medical people with us. He said he’d be OK,’’ he said.
The doctor said it would be inappropriate to comment. The district health board would not comment, citing the Health and Disability Commission complaint.
Milligan said Holden had been irritable since his six-week immunisations, including a live Rotavirus vaccine, on March 6.
When days later he got green diarrhoea, she went to her GP, who sent her to Grey Base Hospital, who then transferred him to Christchurch Hospital’s High Dependency Unit. He was discharged last Tuesday when his condition improved. His notes say ‘‘put down to rotavirus immunisation’’.
Milligan drove the five hours home to Westport, but the next morning her son deteriorated.
‘‘I took one look at him and thought he wasn’t right. He was so pale and his eyes were sunken. He was away with the fairies, sleepy. So I took him to Buller Hospital emergency department,’’ she said.
She got to hospital at 8.45am on Wednesday.
Sullivan and Milligan were angry with the lack of urgency by the Buller Hospital doctor as Holden got ‘‘worse as every half-hour went by’’ during the nine hours they were there.
Holden’s Grey Base hospital records, provided to The Press by his parents, say the baby had respiratory distress, appeared dehydrated and his condition was ‘‘imminently life-threatening’’.
He was put back on antibiotics, a drip and later a nasal-gastro feeding tube. By Tuesday, Holden was recovering well.
West Coast District Health Board general manager Philip Wheble said someone from the customer services team would be in touch with the family to discuss their concerns.