Texas Children's Hospital West Campus — Local services in Houston

On February 6, 2024, we rushed our daughter to TCH West Campus ER department and arrived at approximately midnight. We explained to the front desk staff that we decided to bring her as her temperature was 104 and requested help.

We were checked in, vitals were taken, and we completed and turned in the documentation given to us by the front desk staff. When a nurse brought us back to the triage room, I remember her making comment around us not bringing our daughter to her primary care doctor sooner. I explained to the nurse we were tracking our daughter's condition/temperature to see if she would improve, and that she had an appointment scheduled with her PCP that Thursday. I believe the triage nurse's comment was unprofessional, and her main focus should have been assisting my daughter not passing judgement us as parents.

The triage nurse brought us back to the ER waiting room and advised that they have to wait an hour before her temperature is checked again. After waiting an hour the triage nurse, nor any other staff that was sitting at the ER front desk came to direct us to take my daughter's temperature again. We were sitting approximately 10 feet from the front desk, and we could hear the triage nurse along with the other staff talking and laughing loudly (where everyone in the waiting room with their sick child could hear) about taking time off from work/taking leave/taking vacation. This was very unprofessional and inappropriate, especially it being a hospital/emergency room environment.

I at that point took my daughter to the vitals station in the ER and requested her vitals to be taken. Approximately 30 minutes after her vitals were taken, we were finally taken back to a room. After a nurse did a swab on my daughter, the nurse left and we waited over an hour in this room and no one came to speak with us, and when I pushed the nurse/call button the woman that answered spoke to us as if she didn't even know we were waiting in the room.

This person that spoke with us via the call/nurse button I believe then came in the room and told us that my daughter's test came back negative. It seemed like that is all the information that she had to pass down to us. We informed her that we have been waiting close to two hours in this room and we have not met with the ER doctor to discuss my daughter's conditions further.

This nurse/staff member left, and the main/charge nurse came in to apologize to my husband and I. A little after the doctor did come in and speak with us. I remember her asking us a question that was inappropriate to the reason why my daughter was there.

Overall, my husband and I felt like my daughter was forgotten about once we were brought back to her main room. No one came to give her medicine to lower her fever even though we were there for quite some time.

There were ER facilities closer to our home, but I wanted to bring her to TCH that night because I believed they were one of the best hospitals who genuinely care for children. My husband and I arrived at the hospital that night around midnight and we were not discharged until a little after 6am.

Our experience was not a good one, and we do not plan on returning. Hopefully things will change for the better so that future patients will receive the quality care and attention...

Absolutely heartbreaking experience at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) West Campus in Katy.

Over the past few days, our baby Lucas wasn’t feeling well. His pediatrician believed it was just allergies, but something didn’t feel right. Trusting our instincts, we took him to TCH West Campus—unfortunately, it turned out to be even worse than a previous bad experience we had at TCH in the Med Center.

Lucas was visibly struggling to breathe. We informed the front desk and triage nurse that we were using our own portable oxygen tank, expecting the hospital to either provide oxygen or get us into a room quickly—as most hospitals do—so we wouldn’t run out. I asked multiple times (at least 3 or 4 over the span of 2–3 hours), but we were left waiting in the lobby. We couldn’t even leave because we no longer had enough oxygen to get home safely.

At one point, the receptionist casually said, “He’s just a baby, he’s fine.” But he wasn’t fine. He was crying, sick, and clearly in distress. We felt helpless, stressed, and ignored. I honestly believe if I hadn’t kept asking about the oxygen, we would’ve been left waiting even longer.

There were so many sick babies and children in the waiting room—some families had been waiting 3 to 6 hours or more. How is that acceptable in a pediatric emergency room?

After hours, we were finally called back. At that point, I was emotionally drained and deeply concerned. With RSV, rhinovirus, and other respiratory illnesses going around, we just wanted someone to take his breathing seriously.

The ER nurse told us they would give Lucas steroids, a nebulizer treatment, and perform “deep suction”—but no one explained what that meant. The last time something similar happened, Lucas had to be intubated in the NICU. When they began, Lucas started choking on his own saliva, blood, and mucus. He was screaming in distress. I begged the nurse to stop. Lucas has chronic lung disease—this procedure should have been explained and handled with much more care. It felt traumatic and careless.

Then, they told my husband to drive 30–40 minutes back home to pick up Lucas’s BiPAP machine, leaving me alone with our sick baby. While he was gone, I called for help two or three times because Lucas didn’t look right. I was repeatedly dismissed with comments like, “He looks fine, momma,” or “His breath sounds good.” But I know my baby. He was not fine.

When my husband returned, we made the difficult decision to leave.

While in the ER, I spoke with several other parents. A newborn with respiratory issues had been waiting 4 hours. A toddler with suspected appendicitis had been waiting 5. Another child had a deep forehead gash and was still waiting after 3 hours. It was devastating.

No parent should feel like the ER is the wrong place to take their child. No parent should have to fight so hard to be heard. And no one should be pushed to the point of emotional breakdown just to get basic care for their baby.

Our healthcare system is deeply broken. Over the past year, we’ve been in and out of hospitals—not just for Lucas, but for myself as well—and I’ve seen how many ERs lack empathy, urgency, and basic communication.

We’re now home, managing the situation ourselves. This experience left us shaken, disappointed, and...

My experience at Texas Children’s was the absolute worst experience I had at any healthcare facility. From front desk to nurses to the physician. I really try my hardest to be understanding and patient to the people around me and I can absolutely understand that working in these type of environments can be extremely stressful but that does not take away to be dismissive and condescending. In this instance, from the moment I came into the hospital which was 11:00 to the moment I left was 6:00. 7 hours of being there and I waited and waited and waited for 3-4 hours in the room. I get it. But the reason why I’m bringing this up is that I have been in that hospital for 7 hours and the moment I got discharged, I needed to go to the bathroom. My 6 month old baby recently had to get a catheter inserted and I can tell it hurt because she was screaming and crying horribly and she tolerates a lot. Eventually it bothered again and she’s extremely uncomfortable, probably burning in that area because they forgot to turn on all of the lights to insert it correctly and she was profusely crying. And so I asked the nurse if she can watch her and she did and I rushed to go. I come back not even a minute after and she is still upset and she is horribly crying and I felt so awful and hurt that it was hard to console her but I was still packing her up in her car seat. As I am trying to calm her down, one of the nurses who I have never seen opens the door and ask me “You know if waiting for your ride, you should wait in the lobby. We’re locking this side up” as if I wanted to stick around and be there and twiddle my fingers. By the way, I drove. But she even sees me trying to getting ready to leave. I said “I understand but she’s screaming horribly and I’m just trying to help her. We’re about to go.” And she responded “I’m letting you know you need to leave so we can lock it up” Mind you, I probably stayed in that room 5-10 minutes at MOST after discharge and proactively getting my things together and that’s including the bathroom trip. So if you’re so worried about me getting out in time, then don’t make me wait 6-7 hours for a urine culture and a viral swab. To which by the way, the PHYSICIAN asked ME what interventions am I looking for and asked me WHY. My daughter fell, and not the day of, not the day after, but the day after that, she was not eating, was acting unusually lethargic, wasn’t as responsive and her behavior wasn’t normal. And when I admitted her into the hospital, I tried to feed her and I successfully did. Good, she finally added 5 oz to the 7 oz she ate for the entire day. And now that my daughter felt better after because my daughter finally got some type of food, that she dismisses that anything is even wrong. She ate again but this time it was 2 oz, which isn’t even half her serving. But it’s magic to the physician. But that’s how it’s been all day, 1-2 oz. here and there. So she apparently wants to wait until she pretty much starved herself to call it an emergency when normally she eats 40 oz a day. I feel as if the professional should be telling me from the ordeal of the entire incident what interventions you feel is needed to get her the help she needs. Instead of asking me as if...