A six-year-old girl has died after twice being sent home from Sydney Children’s Hospital in the city’s east.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The girl was taken to the emergency department on Monday, where she was clinically assessed and discharged, according to a spokesperson for the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (SCHN).<\/p>\n
Her family brought her back to the hospital a short time later, where she was diagnosed with influenza and again discharged, after being offered “at-home guidance,” according to the statement.<\/p>\n
The girl was later admitted to Northern Beaches Hospital, where she died on Tuesday, police confirmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The kindergarten student has been described as a “bright, vivacious, kind and free-spirited” by St Luke’s Grammar School principal Geoff Lancaster.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Lancaster told the ABC the girl was “so full of light and joy, and adored by her parents, teachers and the many friends she had at St Luke’s”.<\/p>\n
In an email informing the Dee Why school community of her death on Tuesday night, Mr Lancaster said: “No words can express the heartbreak [the parents] are experiencing. As a school community, we share their grief and pray [they] would know the love and support of family and friends.”<\/p>\n
School families were offered counselling and grief resources at a meeting on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
One parent, who has a child in the same year, told the ABC she was distraught.<\/p>\n
“We were all crying at the meeting. It’s a really huge shock\u2026 she was a very popular little girl,” the parent said.<\/p>\n
Death referred to coroner, serious incident investigation<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for SCHN said it “expresses our deepest condolences to the family for the loss of their child”.<\/p>\n
“SCHN is progressing an initial review into the patient’s care while at the hospital.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Northern Beaches Hospital said: “Alongside Sydney Children’s Hospital Network, where the child received care earlier in the day, we will undertake the appropriate investigations in line with NSW Health policy, including a joint independent review. A coronial inquest has also been called into the child’s passing.”<\/p>\n
NSW Health Minister Ryan Park described the death as “devastating” and said he intended to “understand how and why this tragedy has occurred, and the parents deserve answers”.<\/p>\n
“I’m also mindful how distressing these events are for staff, and I know they’ll be impacted by this tragedy,” Mr Park said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The matter has been referred to the coroner and will be the subject of a joint Serious Adverse Event Review (SAER), which is used to investigate serious clinical incidents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A six-year-old girl has died after twice being sent home from Sydney Children’s Hospital in the city’s east.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,43097,1300,43099,137,43098],"class_list":["post-51263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-child-dead","tag-death","tag-dee-why","tag-health","tag-sydney-childrens-hospital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}