Critically ill teen made to wait in unit outside hospital
A teenager ended up in the intensive care unit in Dunedin with pneumonia after being made to wait in a portable building outside Queenstown’s locked hospital for three hours.
Her distraught mother, Sunitha Karunakaran, said watching her 18-year-old daughter struggle to breathe in the cold unit on the night of October 25 was one of the worst moments of her life. Hospital staff had been advised of the seriousness of the girl’s condition before her arrival following blood tests at the privately owned Queenstown Medical Centre, Karunakaran said. However, they put her in the external building, which had a bed and small kitchen, while they dealt with other patients.
As her daughter’s condition deteriorated, attempts to alert hospital staff using a buzzer outside the locked hospital were ignored, Karunakaran said.
With another child at home alone, as her husband was in Malaysia visiting family, the pair left the hospital at 11pm. ‘‘I was feeling absolutely helpless all night seeing my girl suffering and unable to breathe,’’ she said.
The next morning staff at Queenstown Medical Centre sent her daughter, who Stuff has agreed not to name, back to the hospital in an ambulance.
Her oxygen level was down to 20%, she had a fever of 38.7C coughing
and was uncontrollably.
She was put on an Otago Rescue Helicopter and sent to Dunedin Hospital where she was diagnosed with bacterial strep pneumonia affecting both lungs and spent three days in intensive care. Once stable she was moved to a general ward.
Karunakaran said the episode was ‘‘extremely distressing’’.
‘‘If [the hospital staff] had seen us that night then my daughter wouldn’t have got to the point of almost losing her life.’’
Her daughter now faces a sixweek recovery period and was forced to miss her last week of high school and the opportunity to apply for scholarships and complete work for assessments.
‘‘I understand that they don’t have staff but they don’t need to be rude,’’ she said.
‘‘When I rang the bell so many times to say she is struggling to breathe, they just ignored us.’’
Despite Karunakaran and her daughter providing a written statement waiving their rights to privacy, an unnamed Te Whatu Ora southern spokesperson declined to discuss the case.
The portable building at Lakes District Hospital was used as a dedicated space for patients presenting with cold and flu symptoms who needed to be isolated, the spokesperson said.
‘‘Patients who are allocated to this waiting space are checked and assessed regularly.’’
That was not the case on the night of October 25, Karunakaran said. Prior to their arrival at Lakes District Hospital, staff had been made aware of her daughter’s condition by doctors at Queenstown Medical Centre.
Her daughter had spent the day at the medical centre on an intravenous line before going home at 6pm. At 7pm the doctor called the family to advise blood tests revealed the teenager’s white and red blood cell counts were concerning, and she needed to go immediately to hospital.
Staff at the hospital confirmed they had spoken with the medical centre, that the situation was ‘‘urgent’’ and that her daughter would be seen soon, Karunakaran said. They were told to wait in one of the two rooms in the portable unit. ‘‘It was too cold out there but we were ignored and told we had to wait as there were other patients who were more ill,’’ she said.