https://amp.cincinnati.com/amp/950652001
How can this child be out through 13 surgeries and not have anything truly wrong with him. Looking at this through the eyes of a nurse I can see exactly how messed up our Healthcare system is and where it goes wrong. After working for almost 6 years on a nursing home I saw first hand the lengths that administration and doctors would go through just to please a family member and shut them up. The amount of unnecessary testing that was done because the family wanted it or just the family requesting things that were not in the patients best interest always made emergency feel uneasy. From pain medications being stopped on a patient who was in pain and at the end of life from a child who is states away because they threaten to sue and do not believe in pain medications to inserting a nasogastric tube multiple times in a dementia patient who is refusing to eat and keeps pulling the tube out and is at the end of their life. If just one person would have stopped and saw that this kid was seen 323 times and there was nothing medically wrong with him and actually stood up and opened their mouth. How did the insurance company allow all of this yet not have proof of anything such as cancer or any other may medical issues. The boy can eat perfectly fine and doesn't not require oxygen after being taken away from his mother. Why was this boy given oxygen in the first place. It is very easy to see if someone needs oxygen, a simple pulse ox reading or blood gas shows if the oxygen levels are low. Why was this poor boy given a gtube to feed him, a simple speech an swallow evaluation could show if he had any issues with swallowing and if he had no issues and was loosing weight then it was obviously something the mother was doing such as not feeding him. We as nurse are trained to assess not only the patient but the whole family dynamic. I can walk into my patients home to do an assessment by not inky listening to what they say but by seeing what is around. They can tell me they always take their medications and yet if I see bottles filled with pills I will know they don't. How could all of the healthcare providers that this boy came in contact with, nurses, doctors, aides, surgeons social workers and everyone else not see that something was wrong with him.. His mother was what was wrong. What this poor child endured since he was 11 days old breaks my heart as a mothers of 2 small children. All the surgeons saw was money. They all should be sued by this little boy for his pain and suffering and they all should be reprimanded in some type of way. I can't walk into a hospital and say hey my leg is broken I need surgery and the surgeons just jump and do it, no they will take an xray to see. There is tests for every thing and this all just makes no sense. Another thing is that all nurses and doctors should be educated on the signs of munchausen by proxy especially if they are working with children. Change needs to start now.