Nurses are reminding families that the emergency room is in fact the best first stop for serious health concerns.
It’s happened a number of times already this year; a family shows up at an urgent care with a baby or infant struggling to breathe and an ambulance rushes the child to the nearest ER.
Jaime Gibson, an Akron Children’s nurse practitioner, said parents sometimes have a difficult time recognizing the severity of their child’s illness. Look out for signs that your child doesn’t want to talk or play, she said.
“Kids kind of mask how they feel until they don't mask anymore," Gibson said. "So if you see a kid that looks really crummy, for lack of a better word, they're really sick at that point.”
Parents should take their child to the ER for broken bones, pain in the belly button with fever and vomiting, pain in the lower right part of the abdomen, and if the child has a history of asthma or wheezing and their albuterol is not helping them, she said.
Babies should be seen at the ER if they have any respiratory symptoms, or have not had a wet diaper in at least four hours and are not taking at least 50-75% of their feeds, Gibson said.
People should call 911 for an ambulance to the hospital if a child is turning blue or appears to have stopped breathing.
Gibson recognizes some parents may avoid ERs because they fear large copays or long wait times. But she said urgent cares aren’t equipped to manage serious cases of respiratory illness such as RSV, which can lead to a dangerous delay in care.
“If you have a child struggling to breathe with RSV or asthma, that's not responding to the albuterol at home, we don't have any of the support mechanisms such as (oxygen devices that can best aid in recovery)," Gibson said.
The other problem with most urgent cares is they don’t triage the sickest patients like ERs do, potentially leading to delays in care that could be critical for sicker children, she said.
