You’re calling for THEIR professional advice, so stop complaining about the procedure. It’s funny how it seems everyone knows how to do everyone else’s job. I’m sure there’s a reason as to why they NEED to break down every detail. If they give the wrong information BASED on what YOU gave them, what do you think would happen?

To ‘Dazed’: had you considered that the nurse was concerned about your daughter based on the information that YOU gave the nurse? You called Telehealth and suddenly you’re daughter is ok. Well, does the nurse really know that? She/he’s trying to help you. You even said yourself that you “basically let her answer her own questions”. Are you a nurse? No you’re not. You called for a nurse’s opinion, so answer the questions.

Honestly, we are spoiled rotten with services and people can do nothing but complain. The sense of entitlement is sickning.

We have a 6 week old daughter. Last night she was crying in a higher pitch than normal, and had not urinated in about 6 hours. My wife asked me to call telehealth for the first time. The “nurse” who answered started with questions about my daughter who essentially stopped crying about a minute into the call. She asked a question, I would give an answer and she would ask again. It became pretty apparent to myself my daughter was ok as she really didn’t have any symptoms. However the nurse kept asking similar questions. She then asked how often my daughter was feeding and I replied every hour or two. The nurse then about 5 times said every few minutes is too much. She wouldn’t listen to me. Eventually I grew frustrated and basically let her answer her own questions. Eventually she came to the conclusion my daughter was dehydrated. (Even after I had explained she had fed normally and had a dr. checkup 3 days previous and my daughter had been putting on weight very well). The nurse came back and said that I needed to get her to a hospital. I was a bit exhausted of her and frankly my daughter seemed ok just a bit cranky. To get off the call I finally said I would take her to an emergency centre.

This is where it gets bad. The phone rang about 3 minutes later, my wife answered and the nurse asked if we were taking my daughter to the hospital. We had spoken after I got off the phone, and we felt she was ok but would watch her. My wife said no to the nurse. The nurse immediately started asking about the welfare of the child, and why we were not going if I had said I was going to emergency. This went on for about 5 minutes when my wife, again to get off the call said we would visit a hospital.

My daughter calmed down, had a wet diaper and a stool movement and fell asleep.

2 hours later at 12:30 in the morning we get a call from CHILD SERVICES stating they had been contacted from Telehealth nurses and were fearful for my daughters safety. That we needed to report to an emergency room immediately and have a hospital official contact Child services that we had indeed arrived. We argued slightly but really just wanted this nightmare to go away. We asked for the nurses names and headed to the emergency room. Upon arrival we explained ourselves to the triage nurse who upon examing our daughter said this is a waste of time, that our daughter was fine, she said we seem like nice people and she called the Child services number. At first nobody answered. We had to wait 30 minutes (In the emergency room of a large Toronto hospital with a 6 week old infant-germs apparently had not entered the telehealth’s nurses thoughts) for a child care rep to call back. The triage nurse said “what is telehealth doing, this child does not need to be here.” The child services basically said the nurse at telehealth said the baby was in danger. The triage nurse said we were free to go, that if we wanted to we could see a doctor but it wasn’t necessary. By this time feeling we were awful parents, we stayed for 2 hours waiting to see a doctor just to be sure. By this time we scared to take off my daughter diaper, just to “prove” she had now urinated, nothing seemed wrong. The doctor finally arrived, we explained our evening. He laughed and said telehealth and child services do this alot. He inspectect my daughter for 30 seconds, my daughter urinated on the examination table. The doctor appologized for us having to come in and said my daughter was fine.

So it ends. No today child services calls and say that they have to come with a nurse to inspect our home and give our daughter an examination. They said they can only come during working hours. Now I need to miss work. They have to have someone inspect my home. I am sure this is recorded by either health canada or the provincial government. I believe our family doctor needs to be contacted.

Obviously I have contacted an attorney, and have been advised to have someone in the house with us when the inspection takes place.

Could anyone help me in the sense that has anyone else gone through something like this. It is humiliating. If anything we are new parents, likely overly cautious, phoned telehealth for information and an opinion. Because of a 5 minute telephone call, poorly asked questions and not listening to answers, it has turned into a weeklong and now possibly litigious affair.

I will NEVER consider calling again. And by the way most nurses and doctors in emergency centres I have spoken with today, Telehealth is a massive burden on emergency rooms, doing the exact opposite of what it was attended for.

Do I have legal recourse?

I don’t have a clinical background, but I can appreciate how people generally have difficulty articulating and describing a situation or symptoms – adding to the complexity is the fact that lay people may not have the appropriate technical knowledge to accurately describe what they are experiencing.

My apologies if you felt that I was critizing the work of Telehealth Ontario. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the program and what it can do for people in the middle of the night.

I can’t speak on behalf of health professionals working in the ER, but I think that in order to improve the system, we need to examine the consequences on all aspects of the system and not just one or two parts.

Discussion is good.

If someone says they have chest pain, many possibilities exist. However, only through a physical assessment can it be determined if it is heart-related or not. Thus a 911 or ER referral is warranted, depending on how severe the symptoms are. It may be nothing, but that cannot be determined over the telephone.

On the other hand, many people go to ER for viruses that could be treated at home. Telehealth is there to give advice on how to treat these symptoms and keep them away from the ER. When asking these callers what they would have done if they had not called Telehealth, many say they would have gone to ER. Some even say they would have called 911!

One final point, the service is also there to help answer any health-related questions. Parents love the service, especially when it relates to newborns, what is normal/not normal, breastfeeding questions, etc.

Overall, this 24-hr service provides great comfort to many people. If some people go to ER and have no significant issues, then all the better for them. But I don’t think they would want to take the chance that it could be something serious.

Sorry for the long message. I hope I explained my points clearly.