Unnecessary Care?

It isn’t much of a case, but it created questions in my mind. A mom brings her 8 year old daughter to the hospital for a nonproductive cough. No fever. No runny nose. Just a cough. The patient had started school again this week, and so the microbiome in her nasal passages had thus begun mixing with all of the other microbiomes on school lunch tables, desks, and childrens’ shirt sleeves. The end result was that now she was coughing for a couple of days – like a majority of other children in the school. The child looked fine. I told the mother that she likely had a “head cold” and that it would have to run its course. The mother wasn’t convinced. “How do you know she doesn’t have the flu”? “Well, I don’t know for sure, but even if she did have the flu, it wouldn’t change the management right now. It would still have to run its course.” “I want her tested for the flu.” “Influenza testing really won’t help us much. The test itself has a high false negative rate, meaning that even if the test is negative, a large percentage of people still end up having influenza.” “I want her tested for the flu.” Fine, I thought. It’s your money. Forty five minutes later, results from the influenza swab came back negative. “So like I was saying before, this is something that will have to run its course.” “You said that the test wasn’t accurate. Ther...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Tags: Patient Encounters Source Type: blogs