Health authorities are reviewing an early warning system for paediatric patients used at Canberra Hospital but have defended the current system, saying it is able to identify extremely ill children.
Concerns have been raised about the current system and its limited ability to escalate care and monitoring of paediatric patients based on certain symptoms.
The ACT's opposition has called for an urgent review of the system following the deaths of two Canberra children in recent months.
Australian Medical Association ACT branch president Walter Abhayaratna has said the territory should consider changes to its system to monitor paediatric patients.
Dr Abhayaratna said the early warning system needed to be tweaked. He said the system had an aggregate score and this score determined how often a patient was monitored.
He said the system often did not allow for monitoring to be escalated based on one factor alone.
"If you have an aggregate score, you discount the increase in something like the heart rate that goes very high or very low. And a [health worker] may say 'well the whole score is not too high so I won't escalate the case by taking more observations or calling a team that reviews the patient'," Dr Abhayaratna said.
"A new protocol will allow staff to escalate the care of paediatric patients with a single item, such as heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, saturations of oxygen and respiratory rate.
"Those measures and perhaps a really concerned staff member or parent. Those individual measures could then escalate the frequency of observations and the call for additional care."
Dr Abhayaratna also emphasised on Tuesday that parents should not lose confidence in the health system.
He said there were fears people would not present because of the issues being highlighted and that could result in children deteriorating in settings where they will not receive any care.
"I have every confidence that Canberra has a paediatric service and an emergency department and intensive care that is able to provide safe and high quality care in terms of patients in our paediatric population," he said.
Opposition health spokeswoman Leanne Castley has called for an urgent review, saying an immediate response was needed and the government should not wait for the findings of the coronial inquests into the deaths.
"Don't just think of these grieving families, we hear [Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith] say that a lot, but it's time she did something to take action. That's what the families want and I know it's what all parents in the ACT want," she said.
"We don't want doubt in taking our children to hospital."
A Canberra Health Services spokesman said the system had been under review over the past 12 months.
"The review has included input from a range of clinicians, a review of the national and international literature and alternative warning systems," the spokesman said.
"Frequency and escalation are key components of the early monitoring system we currently have in place. The review of [the system] and alternative systems will include review of frequency if required."
But the spokesman defended the current system, saying it had been externally confirmed as being sufficient in the recent accreditation of Canberra Health Services by the Australian Council on Health Care Standards.
The call for better monitoring comes in response to recent deaths of children who had been treated at Canberra Hospital.
Rozalia Spadafora, five, died at Canberra Hospital in July, one day after her fifth birthday. She died from a cardiac arrest from the viral infection myocarditis while waiting for transport to Sydney.
Her family has raised concerns about the treatment she received, saying Rozalia had to wait hours to receive a bed or get blood tests. Rozalia's death is being investigated by the ACT Coroner.
The death of 13-year-old Brian Lovelock is also being investigated by the ACT coroner. Brian died last month after he went into cardiac arrest. His mother, Mel Clancy, told A Current Affair he had contracted COVID and was very underweight due to a lifelong eating disorder.
Brian was treated at Canberra Hospital, where hospital staff worked for 45 minutes to revive him. His heart did restart following the resuscitation but he was transported to a Sydney hospital where he died days later.
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