Lazycoder

Recently my daughter was sick. I’ll spare you a lot of the gory details, suffice to say vomiting was included. She couldn’t keep anything, solid or liquid, down. So we took her into urgent care at our local Children’s Hospital. As soon as the doctor came in the room, my daughter started to vomit again. The doctor examined her for a little while and asked us some questions then said that she would give her some IV fluids and some Zofran. Zofran is an anti-nausea drug. Between the two treatments, her vomiting stopped and she was able to keep down some apple juice. The doctor prescribed a small amount of Zofran for us to keep at home and use over the next few days if her vomiting came back.

The reason this incident inspired this blog post is because last Christmas, my daughter had the same symptoms and we took her into urgent care at that time. The main difference was, last Christmas I had different medical coverage and we went to a different hospital. At this hospital, the policy was that my daughter was too young to take Zofran. That meant all they could give her was IV fluids to help combat dehydration. So for the next 12 hours, my daughter vomited and suffered.

Now I’m sure the doctors who made the policy decision “No Zofran for children under age 5″ had good reason for making that decision. Zofran has some side effects. They may have felt that the risks outweighed the benefit. However other doctors, with different experiences and background, decided that Zofran is alright for a 3 year old to take if it soothes suffering and allows the child to get some fluids in their system. Two sets of doctors. Two different sets of experience and background. Two different opinions. One had a less than optimal effect on my daughter, but no long term effects. The other had an immediate positive effect, but with more risk.

Defining best practices for your group is a poor substitute for putting trust in the professionals you hire.