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
The parenthetical "necessary" bothers me. I fully understand your explanation of why it is necessary, but your verbiage here places primacy completely on the doctor's advice. Negotiating is not a luxury - it is a necessity. Otherwise "informed consent" is no more than "the doctor said so".
From the article, the baby's temp subsided after sub-q fluids were given, in the intervening time between Dr. Godzilla's edict and the actual tap. Does this observation mean nothing, medically? (I don't know the answer to that question, so please don't consider it rhetorical or inflammatory.)
Finally, when communications break down between ER doctor and patient/parent, do you believe that the patient/parent loses authority to the doctor in a case such as this?