No chance of life: Parents demand answers from hospital after 2-year-olds preventable death

Two-year-old Joe Massa had “no chance of life” once he walked through the doors of the emergency department at Northern Beaches Hospital in Australia — even though he could have been saved with something as simple as an IV drip.For the devastated parents of the “bright and loving” little boy, who loved dinosaurs and playing in his garden, what should have been a routine hospital visit last September turned into their worst nightmare.Elouise and Danny Massa say their beloved Joe’s preventable death was caused by systemic failures at Northern Beaches Hospital, leading to a dereliction of duty, critical delays and misdiagnosis.They are demanding urgent reform and accountability to ensure it doesn’t happen to another family.“Joe had no chance of life once we walked through the doors of the ED,” Elouise told news.com.au.“That’s the whole purpose of speaking out.”Joe was taken to the emergency department at the Frenchs Forest hospital on the morning of Sep.

14, after experiencing vomiting the previous night.By the time they arrived at the hospital at 7.06 a.m., Joe had a dangerously elevated heart rate and was pale, floppy and growing unresponsive.The boy was suffering significant hypovolemia, a condition that occurs when the body loses too much fluid — and that would typically be treated by IV fluid resuscitation.Crucially, the ED triage nurse documented that Joe was in triage category three, which indicates a patient requiring treatment within 30 minutes, rather than the “red zone” category two, defined as requiring treatment within 10 minutes due to an imminently life-threatening condition.A Serious Adverse Event Review (SAER) later confirmed Joe’s heart rate of 182 beats per minute (BPM) should have placed him squarely in category two and triggered a “rapid response”.At 7.39 a.m., more than half an hour after arriving at hospital, a nurse collected Joe and his mother and walked them to pediatric emergency, where he was placed in a ...