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