Speaker 1: A report out today. This is a delicate issue obviously,
Speaker 1: a report out today that our parents gut instinct that
Speaker 1: their child is deteriorating, their health is deteriorating. This could
Speaker 1: be used in a hospital. The basis of this report
Speaker 1: is that a lot of parents have a comprehensive instinctive
Speaker 1: feeling about their child's health. Michael Page is, the WA
Speaker 1: President of the Australian Medical Association, joins me now today.
Speaker 2: Michael, morning Bowie.
Speaker 1: It's my understanding when parents perhaps do present in an
Speaker 1: eed or to in a serious situation that they are
Speaker 1: they can be asked there is a parental scorecard, is
Speaker 1: my understanding. But this is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: game change. This Monash University study. Are you worried that
Speaker 1: your child is getting worse? Is the question? What do
Speaker 1: you think and feel?
Speaker 2: Look, I think this study tells us what many parents
Speaker 2: probably already know, that their instincts about their child's health
Speaker 2: pretty good, are pretty well honed. And it also tells
Speaker 2: us something that many doctors and nurses who work, particularly
Speaker 2: in emergency departments. This is an emergency department based study
Speaker 2: also already know, which is that if a parent is
Speaker 2: concerned expresses concern, then they ought to be taken seriously
Speaker 2: because they know their child well and if they've got
Speaker 2: a gut feeling that something is just not quite right
Speaker 2: with their child, in many instances that gut instinct will
Speaker 2: be correct and may even and may even may even
Speaker 2: be superior to traditional kind of measures of whether a
Speaker 2: child is unwell. In other words, of parent's gut instinct
Speaker 2: might give you more information than just taking their heart right,
Speaker 2: taking the blood pressure, changing the temperature, and so forth,
Speaker 2: that might give you additional information over and above those
Speaker 2: things as to whether that child is likely to deteriorate.
Speaker 2: And that's something that has been I think, you know,
Speaker 2: many people have known that for a long time. It
Speaker 2: has already before the publication of this study started to
Speaker 2: be incorporated increasingly to clinical assessment algorithms in emergency departments,
Speaker 2: as you alluded to, and of course you know there's
Speaker 2: been some high profile cases which have drawn attention to that.
Speaker 1: So, Michael, to your understanding, and I haven't unfortunately I've
Speaker 1: been I haven't been to an AD with any of
Speaker 1: my kids apart from one time. But that was fairly
Speaker 1: obvious that she'd managed to breathe in a ten cent coin,
Speaker 1: so we all knew what was happening. But is it
Speaker 1: part of the process now where the parent is proactively
Speaker 1: asked in in wads, what do you think is happening here?
Speaker 2: It's a pretty routine it's a pretty routine question now
Speaker 2: in emergency departments for parents to be asked about their
Speaker 2: level of concern. I mean, I suppose to some extent
Speaker 2: their level of concern is taken for granted given that
Speaker 2: they've brought their child to an emergence department. I've obviously
Speaker 2: got some baseline concern. But now we've got things like
Speaker 2: call lines in the emergency department. If a child is
Speaker 2: waiting in an emergency department waiting room, they are able
Speaker 2: to raise their concerns proactively by use of a telephone
Speaker 2: to say, look, I think my child's deteriorating in the
Speaker 2: waiting room. I don't think it can wait any longer,
Speaker 2: and that should alert the clinicians to the need to
Speaker 2: more rapidly assess that child. Because, of course, sometimes a
Speaker 2: child might only be subtly unwell. But the thing about
Speaker 2: children is they're very resilient until they until they're not
Speaker 2: if you get what I mean, they can appear quite
Speaker 2: well and things can go south, very, very suddenly, and
Speaker 2: that's why that parental concern. Look, I think my child's
Speaker 2: deteriorating needs to be needs to be factored in, because
Speaker 2: that can happen very quickly in an emergency fart a
Speaker 2: waiting room.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I hope you don't mind me asking this, Michael,
Speaker 1: do you have kids? Has your gutting sync around your kids?
Speaker 2: I do? And you know, thinking about a study like this,
Speaker 2: you know, as a parent rather than a doctor, I think, well, gee,
Speaker 2: you know every time, you know, doctors are the worst
Speaker 2: actually when it comes to catastrophizing things with their own children.
Speaker 2: You know, you know, the slightest symptom is suddenly a
Speaker 2: horrible disease, and of course usually it's not. And that's
Speaker 2: why I think a study like this is important and
Speaker 2: it should change practice. But of course it's not to
Speaker 2: say that every child's, every parent's worst morbid fear about
Speaker 2: what the symptoms their child has could mean are necessarily
Speaker 2: going to be correct. And I say that from personal experience,
Speaker 2: not again as a parent. You know, I can catastrophize
Speaker 2: with the best of us, and I'm usually wrong. So
Speaker 2: it's not to say that we should you know, get
Speaker 2: on Google every time our child's got a sniffle and
Speaker 2: assume the absolute worst. But on the more serious end
Speaker 2: of things, of course, if a parent is worried about
Speaker 2: their child, it does need to be taken seriously and
Speaker 2: it does need to be properly investigated. And when that's
Speaker 2: in the emergency setting, that's where things can really go wrong,
Speaker 2: if something is missed.
Speaker 1: Michael, thanks for making yourself available or we always appreciate
Speaker 1: our chats. Thanks Michael any time.