A few days ago we talked about the presence of parents in the tests of their children and I left the promise that I would tell you a personal case related to the rights of the hospitalized child, so I go to it.
As many of you know, I work as a nurse in a primary care center, specifically in pediatrics, where we suture and draw blood to the children in the presence of the parents. This, which has been the case since I worked in this center (5 years) and that has always seemed to me the most normal thing in the world, it seems that it is not so in all primary care centers and last year, unfortunately, I suffered in my own meats the invitation to wait outside while my son was drawing blood.
For reasons that are not relevant to my children's pediatrician, who is in a different clinic than the one I work for, he requested a blood test from my son Jon, who was then 4 years old. You all know that a blood test to a child is an experience that nobody likes to live, neither the child, nor the parents (nor the professional who has to perform the extraction).
For this reason we were working the matter, from a few days before, through the symbolic game, so that Jon was internalizing what was going to happen. We played doctors (especially Miriam, my wife), we drew blood, we sang a magical song that when sung diminishes the pain (it is true, distraction helps children cope with evils) and when we did it dad talked with Jon and was by his side.
However, the big day arrived, all with a stomach knot of hell and Jon calm, knowing what was going to happen there. They called him by his name and as mom was waiting with the child (we were all, as always ...), I got up to enter with him.
-Daddy will have to stay out - a nurse told me with a wide smile.
-Umm, no - I replied in disbelief.
"Yes," she insisted.
-No, I entered with him who is four years old.
-No, that parents cannot enter with children.
-Well then we go, don't prick it - I said taking my son by the shoulders to keep him from moving forward.
-Well, we don't puncture him - she said.
Then I told them (we said, that Miriam also entered), that It was not our right, but the right of our son to be accompanied, but they insisted that "it is a norm here, the parents cannot enter with the children", to which we respond with the same thing, that a norm of an institution cannot skip a universal right. "So, don't you mind skipping children's rights?" I told them. "I'm sorry, but it's a norm," they replied.
We do not yield, of course not, and no longer because it is a children's right, it is already a matter of respect for them. What memory is going to be left to a 4-year-old boy who is going to be punctured and held by 3 or 4 unknown women dressed in white? I just imagine it I get the creeps.
Nursing is a profession in which the word “empathy” is stamped on your forehead on the first day of college and the last one is stamped on your back again, so you don't forget it. However, there are people who those two days should not go to class, because it does not fit in my head for a nurse to put herself in the place of a 4-year-old boy about to be punctured and tell parents that “they have what to expect outside ”and that“ this is an internal norm ”.
Then we went to the doctor's office to ask for a copy of the analysis request and make it to another site. In my case there was not much problem and I played with the trick that I could do the analysis in my CAP or puncture myself at home (although the latter makes me less funny), however, even if we had not had this possibility We would have done the same.
We ask a claim sheet and fill it out at the same time. Thanks to the mobile internet connection I found the rights of the hospitalized child, dating from 1986, to copy the important paragraphs textually and thus we expressed our complaint for what we considered was an injustice towards our son.
These are the rights I copied:
To be accompanied by their parents or the person who replaces them as long as possible during their stay in the hospital, without impeding the application of the necessary treatments for the child.
To not receive useless medical treatments and not to endure physical and moral sufferings that can be avoided.
Two weeks later we received a response that we did not like too much, when washing our hands in this matter, commenting the Director of the center that the European Charter of the rights of the sick and hospitalized child refers to the hospital environment and not to a primary care center and that, in the absence of a protocol that regulates the performance in these centers, it is the nursing staff who values whether or not the parents are present. In a nutshell, as I thought there was nothing written, "we play like this in my house."
As we do not agree with this interpretation of the rights of children, since in our opinion they should be applied to the entire health field, without differentiating whether the child is in a hospital or in a primary care center, we have decided to consult with the Ombudsman for Children in Catalonia, the Síndic de Greuges And we are currently waiting for an answer.
When there is news about it I will comment.
