During 2010, twelve-year-old Eve had recurring ear infections. A few days before Christmas that year, her mother, Paula, brought her to A&E at the local hospital. The doctor she saw diagnosed an ear infection and prescribed antibiotics. Over Christmas, Eve was very nauseous and experienced dizziness. On New Year’s Eve, she was very unwell. She was unable to dress herself or do anything, and had double vision, so Paula took her back to A&E in the same hospital.
They arrived mid-morning, when A&E had only 4-5 patients, but had a very unsatisfactory and distressing experience with the registrar. Initially he refused to see them at all. Paula and Eve were in a curtained-off cubicle and could hear the doctor talking to the nurse outside, saying aloud, and in front of everyone, 'she was already seen, I don't want to see her, why should I see her. She has been diagnosed with an ear infection, hasn't even finished the antibiotics, why should I be doing this.'
They heard the nurse trying to cajole him, again in front of everybody. 'Ah, do it for my sake, do it as a favour to me, she has a little bit of double vision'. Eventually, as a favour to the nurse, the registrar came in to see them, but it seemed that he could not be bothered, had made his mind up before he saw them and that they were wasting his time.
He looked in Eve's ear and said there was still an infection there. He advised finishing the antibiotics. Paula asked about the nausea and double vision, and felt it should be obvious that Eve was very ill as she had to help her from the chair to the bed. The doctor dismissed this, saying, 'I think a little bit too much television, looking at her phone, and getting a lot of attention from her mum.'
Although Paula believed that the doctor was negligent in his manner and diagnosis, she didn't say anything at the time. This was for fear of antagonising him and the ramifications this might have for Eve's care. but it was awful to have a doctor saying 'no, I'm just not dealing with it.'
As it was New Year's period, Paula then had to wait until January 2 to get an appointment for Eve with her GP. 'I was so scared, because I thought maybe she had a tumour… you feel completely isolated, totally on your own, just kind of pushed away...no one to go to.'
The GP was appalled when she saw Eve and heard of their experiences. Paula 'felt like a paranoid Mum' but the GP said 'no, you know your daughter, keep going' and that they would just have to skip that hospital (even though it had the ENT speciality), go to another hospital and get a different team to work for them. So they went to A&E at this second hospital, hoping they would get somewhere there.
Luckily, they did. The young registrar said 'kids don't make up stuff about headaches and double vision, so there is something causing it...an ear infection won't cause that'. He phoned a consultant and they admitted Eve. The next morning, Eve had an MRI scan and it showed a 3 to 4 inch transverse sinus thrombosis (clot in her head, in the sinuses) which was putting pressure on the optic nerve. Eve was very ill....a 12 year-old at risk of a stroke that could do damage to the brain. She was transferred back to the first hospital (as an ENT case), where she had a mastoidectomy (removal of the mastoid bone behind the middle ear). This had completely rotted, probably from infection that had been there for about three months (the doctors thought that Eve must have a high tolerance for pain or that the nerve endings had been affected because of so much pus). After the mastoidectomy, Eve had to have treatment for the clot and she was transferred back to the second hospital where she remained for a month. She also was seeing an ophthalmologist from a third hospital (a university hospital).
Overall, with the exception of the registrar who wouldn't listen, Paula and Eve feel they experienced excellent care and dealings with healthcare personnel. Paula remembers one day during Eve's stay at the first hospital when she had been particularly upset and crying, a doctor who had been on the rounds earlier that day came back to the ward when he was finished duty. He had taken off his scrubs to go home but came back just to try to cheer her up. This was a registrar, just like the first doctor in the same hospital's A&E who had originally dismissed Eve and Paula - such a difference!
Eve eventually recovered well. She says herself 'all that happens now is that I get recurring ear infections, luckily none of the bad things happened' but Paula knows they could have, easily. 'In the time from New Year’s Eve, us not being able to get a doctor until Jan 2. During that time, she could have had a stroke. When she got admitted to hospital, she was woken up every hour on the hour, asking her little tricks to make sure she understood where she was, what her name was...light shone in her eyes.'
Paula didn't raise the incident at the time - she was only concerned for Eve's wellbeing and didn't want to antagonise anyone providing care for her. She has not raised the matter formally since then either, something which she often feels she should have done especially if it would have reduced the possibility that the doctor in question might continue with this attitude with other patients.
The first hospital (the one that they had been sent away from by the registrar) never mentioned or acknowledged the incident either, despite the fact that the second hospital had to call over their ENT team to help treat Eve. The doctors at the second hospital did indicate that they thought Eve was inappropriately sent home by the registrar in the first hospital, without proper examination. Paula says, 'they were very careful, as of course, they would have to be.'
At the time, Paula did wonder about not being asked by the first hospital why they had ended up in the second hospital. 'When they got the phone-call from the other hospital...you saw a girl a couple of days ago...she's now presented here...she's got a thrombosis. Surely someone, whichever doctor, be it the consultant or medical registrar or whatever, would open Eve's file and say 'oh, she was here, we had her here and we sent her home...why did we send her home?''
While they were in the second hospital, a Patient Liaison Officer asked about their experience in that hospital. They told her it was fantastic, but also explained their initial problems in the first hospital. Although not able to officially comment on this, the Patient Liaison Officer said that they were certainly going to learn from it.
And Paula says that's all she wants, that lessons are learned from their awful experience. 'It would be great if something good can come out of it. To change the mind-set of even one person, then you are changing the experience of all the patients that they come into contact with afterwards.'
For the past five years, Eve has had recurring ear infections, and she attends the ENT consultant's clinic at the first hospital about every 6 months for this. Recently, an administration system mix-up led to Eve being inappropriately discharged from the clinic and a difficult battle to get reinstated but that's another story.