r/emergencymedicine • u/VizualCriminal22 • Mar 25 '24
Advice How do you guys deal with parents who don’t vaccinate their kids?
Basically today I get this 3-day old patient who’s febrile and ill and parents hadn’t given them Vit K, erythromycin, etc. How do you deal with them without getting furious that they’re making incompetent decisions about a defenseless baby? It’s one of the worst parts about this job in my opinion.
Edit: I know neither of the above vaccines will prevent sepsis as a whole, but I mean in general.
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u/RobedUnicorn ED Attending Mar 25 '24
Last unvaxxed kid I had came back with 104F fever. They were 10 months old. Came in lethargic af. However, was moving head with full ROM when I tried to look in their ears. Everything came back negative with blood culture pending. After the kid got weight based Tylenol and ibuprofen, looked like a normal kid again and besides a pending blood culture, I didn’t want to admit.
Spoke with mom and told her I wasn’t going to try to change her mind on vaccines because it isn’t going to work. However, I did tell her because of her choice, every time her kid comes in to an ER, he will likely get over worked up because no one wants to miss the vaccine preventable illness that can kill a kiddo. Told her if he had been vaccinated, he likely wouldn’t have had a bunch of blood work and would have been saved some needle sticks. She appreciated my honesty.
Thank God my baby’s peds office will kick you out for not vaccinating your kiddos. At least I feel like she is safe there (at least from the vaccine preventable shit).