I understand what you are saying but would it have mattered to wait for 30 minutes so the mother could call her husband and get another opinion from another doctor?
I’m going to bet probably not.
No, I don’t think 30 minutes would have made that much difference, but (without reading the whole thing) I suspect that time was dragging on way beyond that and that communications had just completely broken down. I would think that the father would have known they were in the ER and it shouldn’t take 30 minutes to get him on the phone, let him talk to the mother and the ER doc, and get a decision made. Sometimes people just can’t get to a point where they can trust each other, and unfortunately in the ER you don’t get to pick your doctor, and we don’t get to pick our patients...so you just have to do the best you can.
You also have to consider that this wasn’t the only patient in the ER, and since a ‘2nd opinion’ wasn’t readily available, this doc may have been alone (our ER still has only single coverage for several hours every day) trying to manage other patients. Spending 30+ minutes negotiating to do a 5 minute (necessary) procedure is not something you always have the luxury to do.
O2