Mother leaves Mac Kids Emergency with sick child after 12+ hours without care

A woman from Caledonia says she took her child to McMaster Children’s Hospital and ended up leaving after spending the entire night in the emergency department without seeing a doctor.

It was a frightening weekend for Syeda Irsa and her 1-year-old daughter Masha. Irsa says she found blood in Masha’s stool on Sunday morning. After checking additional diapers throughout the day she found more blood.

Masha developed what’s been described as a 2nd-degree burn rash. Syeda took Masha to McMaster Children’s Hospital around 5:30 p.m. on Sunday after getting advice from her dad who is a doctor. At that point, her daughter was unable to sit due to the pain.

By 1 a.m. their names were finally called. Irsa says it wasn’t until 6 a.m. Monday morning until they finally received an update, “she said ‘I’ll be honest with you, there are 4 patients ahead of you’… she clearly said ‘we only have one nurse, one doctor and I’m sorry about that.'”

The Chief of Emergency Medicine at Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) Dr. Kuldeep Sidhu says sadly the increased wait times reflect the situation across the entire province.

Dr. Sidhu calls Masha’s situation “distressing” and says, “I would say that we’ve got to do better than that.”

After more than 12 hours of waiting, Irsa left the hospital without her daughter ever even seeing a doctor.

Luckily Masha was able to see her pediatrician later in the morning and she is healing with antibiotics. Reflecting on her night in the emergency room, Irsa says more needs to be done to improve the public health system.

The NDP is calling emergency room wait times a crisis and is calling for the provincial government to fund a major recruiting effort, increase wages of health care professionals and increase hospital budgets so there can be enough staff on every shift.