The Chair of the Pediatric ER Wrote Back!!!!!

Ms. .......

Thank you very much for bringing your son’s case and experience to our attention. First of all, I hope that Owen is still doing much better.

I absolutely understand how devastating this could be in terms of a missed opportunity to appropriately diagnose. I have to say that in reading your email and updating my knowledge about the condition, I could see how it may be quite difficult to make a diagnosis accurately in an Emergency Department setting and I could see why things occurred in the manner in which they did. That said, I am very sorry that we let you and your family and your son down in this way. Our Pediatric Emergency Department are staffed by a group of very expert pediatric emergency medicine specialists trained in some of our nation’s leading teaching institutions who I was able to recruit here to ...........  to take care of our community. I know that the fact that we were not able to expeditiously diagnose your son’s condition caused a great deal of angst and difficult care.  However, our group is determined to learn from this experience and to learn from your advocacy which I cannot thank you enough for.

With your permission I would like to review your son’s case with our pediatric group and subspecialists within the Children’s hospital to bring greater awareness of this condition, to review the care we provided and to decide how your advocacy can be truly translated into a vehicle that will help others.

I have taken the liberty of attaching a few items below that I am sure you have already seen or investigated. We realize that families who advocate for their loved ones and their conditions often are greatly informed about the condition and disease – sometimes more so than some clinicians.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340339/

http://med.stanford.edu/pans.html

Please allow me to move forward with these plans. If you would be so kind as to, provide me with Ewen’s full name and date of birth. This would be helpful in identifying his records and beginning our review. If you would like to provide this information directly to me, please feel free to call me at ....... and ask for ............she will be more than willing to connect us.

Thank you so much for your time in sending me this note. It is sincerely appreciated and I am hopeful that as a result of your advocacy, we can do better.