Parents want schools to brace themselves
MID-CITY Imagine sitting in an emergency room for eight hours with your 9-year-old daughter, who is screaming at the top of her lungs from the excruciating pain of a broken wrist. Picture sitting there for hours, wondering if a physician is ever going to treat your child.
It’s a parent’s nightmare. It’s also exactly what Aaron and Anita Astrup experienced on Feb. 15 at Saint John’s Health Center, after their daughter, Ariel, injured herself up the street, in the playground at McKinley Elementary School.
That was then, this is now. Now, the couple is angry — angry that they had to wait so long before an orthopaedic surgeon was able to treat their daughter; angry that their daughter was reportedly injected with morphine three times to calm the pain in the meantime; and angry that even though they wanted to leave for another hospital, they were instructed repeatedly to stay put.
Even more perplexing to them is that Dr. Russ Kino, medical director of emergency services at Saint John’s Health Center, has refused their request to send a letter to fellow parents of McKinley Elementary children informing them that the hospital no longer admits children overnight for their emergency care.
“He said he couldn’t give me a letter because, in most cases they get, they don’t need to be admitted,” said Anita Astrup on Tuesday. “They don’t want to deter people from coming.”
Approximately 99 percent of the children cared for at the hospital are well enough to send home, Kino said on Wednesday. Children who do need to be admitted to inpatient care are transferred to other hospitals that support that service, such as Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center or Cedar Sinai Medical Center.
The hospital stopped admitting children overnight a few years ago, after they noticed that there wasn’t a big enough volume of sick children at Saint John’s to justify the staff training, especially when there are other high quality hospitals in the region that do offer inpatient care for children.
McKinley Elementary School, located just two blocks east of St. John’s, has referred children to the hospital for years and there is no need to send out a letter to throw people off their routine, Kino said.
“We do see children in the emergency department,” Kino said. “Nothing has changed. This has been the position in the community for quite some time.”
THINGS WERE TOUGH ALL OVER A fourth grader at McKinley Elementary School, Ariel Astrup was playing a chasing game near the school playground slide when she broke her wrist. A school nurse then placed a temporary bandage on the child’s wrist to prevent movement and referred the parents to Saint John’s because it was closest to the school.
The ordeal began around 11 a.m., when the family arrived at the hospital and didn’t end until 11 p.m., when Ariel Astrup was free to leave. The tear-stained girl was not seen by the orthopaedic surgeon until 7 p.m., according to her mother, who claims she was told by nurses that most of the pediatric doctors were out of town for a conference and the one available surgeon was backed up with patients.
Around 2:30 p.m., the parents reportedly asked a nurse if they could take their daughter to another hospital, but was told they would face a similar situation, since all the area emergency rooms were also backed up.
The situation was more than a normally relaxed father could take.
“I asked the nurse if it was possible to get some flies in here to make it feel a little more like a Third World country,” Aaron Astrup said.
Even though Ariel Astrup was not seen by an orthopaedic surgeon until 7 p.m., she was treated throughout the day, as doctors administered an X-ray and provided her with pain medicine, Kino said.
The nurses did contact area medical centers to see if any of them could admit another child, but all had their hands full, Kino said.
“It was a perfect storm situation,” he said. “We were sort of stuck in an unsavory position of trying to get an orthopaedic surgeon.”
Since the incident at Saint John’s exactly two weeks ago, Anita Astrup has gotten into contact with Resident Nurse Rachel Bressler of McKinley Elementary School.
“I was really floored to hear all this,” Bressler said.
Bressler was concerned the student had the temporary bandage on for so long. The bandage is usually placed on for a short period of time to prevent movement while the child is being transported, she said.
After learning of what ultimately happened to her student, Bressler said she would probably tell parents to take their children to Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center if a similar non-life threatening situation arose again. But Bressler said her referrals will depend on the specific case at hand.
“Saint John’s is a couple of blocks away,” Bressler said. “I can see it from my window.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 1, 2007. Read the original PDF.