The bad parents as in “not caring” aren’t the worst ones, at least for me (not a doctor, paramedic with former leadership/admin roles including in a hospital like environment)- the ones who think they care but really don’t are the ones that get most of my colleagues and me far more. Because for “simply not caring” parents you can at least inform the proper authorities and at least here they are actually fairly good at dealing with them.

But there are so many “bad faith” parents out there meanwhile - intentionally withholding Information from both the healthcare providers as well as the children, withholding care, working against the best interest of their child.

Just to put themselves and their beliefs first. It’s a huge crowd these days:

• The alt-righters who think that their children will get nanobot vaccines and that that modern medicine is against them anyway.

• The alternative medicine idiots who believe in homeopathy and crystals

• The religious numbnuts who think that their God gave them a prayer as universal treatment - and not modern medicine.

• The instagramers. The ones who either need their sick child as a way to gain sympathy or even money in social media, to exclude themselves from other obligations of adult life (that borders on Münchhausen by proxy often). And the ones who blindly follow some influencer and their “new nutrition supplements” that helps against everything.

• The know it all’s. The ones who think a quick google search can actually replace a multi year medical training and specialisation and the four buzzwords they just googled in the elevator make them the new noble price winner. There are actually two types of these people: The diagnosers and the undiagnosers. The first ones have already diagnosed themselves and will jump from hospital to hospital,from doctor to doctor until they finally find someone who gives them the diagnosis they already had in mind four years ago. The undiagnosers are always three steps ahead of you and you can always count in them to bring in another rare disease that needs to be checked out.

People can belong to multiple of these categories. And parents are especially bad at it - I get it, it’s your child - but after working in healthcare on 4 continents for 20 years now it feels like these people spin faster and faster down their rabbit holes today.

Just to give you a few examples(not all directly from me,some from colleagues I know):

• The mother who replaced the “Chemo” for her deadly sick child with saline in an unobserved moment. The twist: It wasn’t even a chemotherapy drug,it was an immunoglobulin, 10k per session. Kid nearly died as a result and will be disabled for life.

• Parents who withhold cancer care for their daughter, daughter suffers immensely and dies. They thought prayer would be enough.

• A mother faking vacation certificate so her kid could attend kindergarden. A few months later the kid showed measles symptoms in the kindergarden and was sent home. The mother faked a doctor’s certificate that the kid was well and non-contagious so the kid could attend an event there. The event was also attended by other parents and the younger siblings. Multiple kids still too young to vaccinate got infected and one kid died.

And a few more recent ones:

• Parents brought their lawyer to the ED when they attended it for a broken arm.

• Parents demand a hymen-repair surgery at 4am on a Sunday for their 17 year old daughter.

• Parent told me the 6 year old kid with diarrhoea and fatigue (at 2am at night) surely had pellagra. Dumbfounded I asked how much corn or sorghum they eat. None,the children don’t like either.