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"Unkept promises"

About: Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital / Day Case Unit

(as a parent/guardian),

We met the staff  a couple hours before hand, they were lovely and put my son right at ease. Told my son exactly how things were going to happen and promised him there would be no needles or masks used to put him to sleep.

Fast forward to getting the general anaesthetic and the tube wasn’t working fast enough - without any warning at all, they put the mask over my son’s mouth and nose, which causes him to freak out completely and try to climb off the bed to get to me.

Every moment once he woke up was completely different for him and once he had calmed down from coming round, he kept asking me why that person had lied to him and he would not talk to him or any other staff member or allow them to run any post procedure observations on him because he didn’t trust them anymore.  

I feel this should never have been allowed to happen, promises should not be made to children that cannot be kept. 

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Responses

Response from Caroline Reid, Clinical Nurse Manager, Community Child Health (Children's Division), NHS Grampian 3 months ago
Caroline Reid
Clinical Nurse Manager, Community Child Health (Children's Division),
NHS Grampian
Submitted on 25/03/2025 at 13:17
Published on Care Opinion at 13:17


picture of Caroline Reid

Dear januaryhj27

I am really sorry to hear about your son's experince and you are right, we should always do our very best to keep our word to children so they can trust what we say. I will make sure this feedback goes to the theatre teams so we can do our best to prevent this happening again, and if you would like to get in touch to share your son's details I could look at this a bit more closely? I can be contacted by email caroline.reid@nhs.scot.

We can offer some play therapy for your son if you think this may help with future visits to the hospital and I would be really happy to discuss options with you if this is something you would like to consider. I am so sorry again that your son's experience wasn't a positive one on this occassion.

Caroline

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