A devastated Aussie couple has called for a parliamentary review after their two-year-old son died after a series of systematic failures at a Sydney hospital.
Elouise and Danny Massa took their ‘bright and loving’ baby boy Joe to Northern Beaches Hospital, in the city’s north, on the morning of September 14.
Joe had spent the night violently vomiting at their Balgowlah home and was suffering a life-threatening condition called hypovolemia after losing too much fluid.
A nurse about to finish her 12-hour night shift categorised Joe as triage category three and flagged he would need treatment within 30 minutes.
But an independent review found Joe’s dangerously elevated heartbeat and ‘pale and floppy’ appearance meant he should have been documented as category two or in the ‘red zone’ which would have seen him treated within 10 minutes.
Instead, Joe spent two-and-a-half hours sitting in an emergency department chair where he was misdiagnosed as suffering from gastro.
The two-year-old went limp, his heart rate continued to skyrocket and he was losing consciousness as his mother became more distressed.
He was not given a bed until Ms Massa screamed ‘my son has gone blind’ as Joe’s eyes began to roll back into his head.
Elouise Massa took her two-year-old to hospital after he spent a night vomiting last September. Hours later, little Joe went into cardiac arrest and suffered irreversible brain damage
Joe is pictured in a hospital bed just moments before he entered cardiac arrest last September
She said the ‘loving’ toddler was overlooked by staff at Northern Beaches Hospital who misidentified his symptoms and failed to get him into a bed for several hours
At 10.30am, the two-year-old was transferred to the resuscitation bay where 17 minutes later he went into cardiac arrest.
Mr Massa arrived at the hospital just as Joe was going into cardiac arrest.
‘I ran from the car park to the ED admission, and then from around the back, I entered the resuscitation room and there was [Elouise] and Joe by themselves in the [resuscitation] bay [with Elouise] screaming on the phone to get Joe better care out of that hospital,’ he told 2GB’s Ben Fordham on Thursday.
‘He went into cardiac arrest the moment I touched his face.’
Sadly, after 29 minutes of CPR Joe had suffered severe and irreversible brain damage, and his life support was turned off two days later.
Joe’s distraught parents had requested IV drips and monitoring equipment to see his vitals and believe these interventions could have saved their son’s life.
‘No parent should have to walk out of a hospital with their bags instead of their child,’ a statement from the Massa’s read.
‘Our son should be here today. He had his whole life ahead of him, and we trusted Northern Beaches Hospital to provide the care he needed.
Joe (pictured) spent two-and-a-half hours sitting in an emergency department chair where he was misdiagnosed as suffering from gastro
Joe (pictured with his dad Danny) suffered irreversible brain damage after he entered cardiac arrest at Northern Beaches Hospital. His life support was turned off two days later
‘Instead, he was failed at every level.’
The couple have demanded a comprehensive review of Northern Beaches Hospital and are calling on the NSW government to re-evaluate their contract with Healthscope – the operator responsible for the public wards in the hospital.
‘The system at Northern Beaches hospital failed us at every possible level,’ Ms Massa said.
‘Joe was the most beautiful boy, loved by his sister and brother. He had the most infectious smile. We do not want one more family on the Northern Beaches to go through what we’ve had to go through.’
Ms Massa blames hospital incompetence for treating Joe’s condition as gastro and missing crucial symptoms that would have seen him treated quicker.
‘Because we were being ignored, I wasn’t able to hold Joe’s hands during his last breath. He turned to his side and vomited, a tear rolled down his cheek – and I was still screaming down the phone at a friend to get him out of that hospital,’ she said.
A Serious Adverse Event Review (SAER) report submitted to the NSW Health Ministry in December found Joe’s death could not ‘definitively’ be ruled as ‘preventable’.
‘However, they do acknowledge that there was a delay/failure to recognise deterioration,’ the review found.
‘The SAER team accept that an earlier recognition of the deteriorating child may have provided an opportunity for early escalation and resuscitation with potential prevention of the cardiac arrest.’
A spokesman for Healthscope said the operator understood Joe’s death had ’caused unimaginable heartache and grief for the family’.
‘We met with the family to apologise and hear directly about their tragic experience,’ it read. We will continue to support the family in any way that we can as we implement the improvements identified in the review, including improvements around triaging processes and internal escalation processes,’ he said.
