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The John Radcliffe 2024-09-14 Person 4 5 0

This is specifically regarding the process in Paeds ED. The time between arrival and initial nurse assessment was acceptable, the RN on that particular evening lacked approachability- in Paeds you expect a more open and friendly approach, as parents/guardians in the ED you are stressed, tired and extremely worried so a warmer welcome would be much more appreciated. Following the initial assessment the holding area is basic, we needed to ask for blankets and pillow for the child as they had asked that he go to sleep in order to carry out further observations at rest level, no refreshments offered to parents, arrival time was 1am, by point of admission the mother had been awake over 24hrs and was never offered a cup of tea or coffee. The ED was busy initially but had calmed down alot and a member of the team was talking in the hallway saying how it had tailed off and was actually quite quiet at this point, out of 3 individual bays we were the only ones there for several hours. Once asleep we found a member of the team to let them know and they came and hooked him up to some more wires which obviously woke him again and then we had to wait for him to settle again, once under observation the machine was alerting for fast resperations continuosly but noone came. They were remotely monitoring but the machine was very noisy and as were trying to keep him asleep this was not helpful. An hour into the observations he woke and they decides it was now time to carry out the swabs, my issue with this is that the child was clearlt very distressed upon entry to the ED and was vocally expressing his discomfort, every time he got even more distressed his breathing deteriorated and it took time to calm him, he was struffling with the environment, ths situation and obviously being so poorly, i understand its not a simple process for each pt but i would have thought that upon initial assessment it would have been handed iver that the child is distressed and every little touch and is not hapoy with wires and care intervention therefore all invasive actions should be done quickly and all in one go, he was settled multiple times taking hours at a time only for the next thing needed to wake him. It would have been much better for all had they hooked him up, carried out observations and swabbed all in one not over a period of hours. In the end i ended up swabbing him whilst he slept- i was confident in doing so as i work in the field myself and felt it was better for him as he was not reacting well when being seen by the drs and nurses and it worked, he remained settled despite being swabbed because it was quick and he was able to be held my mummy keeping him settled, if he were awake he would have fought the nurse as she took the swabs. After 7hours in ED he was finally admitted but still no closer to treatment plan or any further along with tests/observations just put on a ward attached to an spo2, with no clear communication as to what the drs/nurses are thinking. I think the staff are doing their best in the ED it just lacks effeciency when going through the process of assessment, i understand the hoops they need to jump to move the patient through the system but it could be much quicker if these initial assessments were carried out in a timely manner. Any information we needed we had to personally source by looking for a member of staff and asking, no-one came to the bedside and explained thw situation, their thoughts and potential outcomes, these answers had to be chased up by us.