The St. Louis Children’s Hospital ER, reviewed!

One in an occasional series of irreverent reviews designed to help people navigate St. Louis in all its quirky glory.

As a dad who is regularly featured on the cover of Neurotic Parent Magazine, I spend a tremendous amount of energy avoiding unscheduled trips to the hospital. With two young and extremely rambunctious little boys, my brain calculates injury probabilities with enough computational power to melt an Armory-sized data center. But even though I employ over-the-top preventative measures to keep them injury free, like cutting their oatmeal into smaller pieces, or making them wear a helmet to play with play-doh, they still find new and innovative ways to maim themselves.

Especially my youngest son, who recently decided to rearrange his bottom teeth on our oven. Finding himself incapable of waiting for me to get his hotdogs steamed vegetables out of the microwave, he attempted to jump up and get them on his own, only for his face to somehow catch the handle of the appliance below. I could tell something was wrong right away because his mouth was suddenly gushing blood, and it usually doesn’t do that. The second clue was that his bottom teeth were sticking in directions they hadn’t been moments earlier, thus making a trip to the emergency room unavoidable.

The closest ER was Mercy South. Even in our panicked state, my wife and I were aware that back when it was called St. Anthony’s, it had a reputation for being a hospital that you went into and then never came out of. Since it is now operated by a different company, I am certainly not suggesting this is still the case, or ever was the case to begin with, but somehow, independently of each other, we had both been under the impression that, at some point in the past, this was perhaps not the best place to go. So we went to St. Louis Children’s Hospital in the Central West End instead.

After being forced to sit through a record number of red lights on Kingshighway, a road that needs no obvious improvements whatsoever, we were finally able to turn into the area marked as the emergency department. It was not easy figuring out where to go after that. The entrance of the ER had multiple signs for their valet service, but very little signage for where to go if you didn’t want to do that. Had my son been showing any indication that he was still in agonizing pain, maybe we would have considered this option, but by this point he was happily bopping his head along to the Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers theme song, looking like he had just killed and eaten a wild animal with his bare hands.

When we finally found the parking garage, we passed multiple levels of compact vehicle parking options, and an equally frustrating amount of empty reserved parking spaces, until we were eventually able to find an open spot. With no signage to assist us in our agitated state, we blindly walked in a random direction until we found an elevator, took it to the ground level, and located the entrance to the emergency room.

The great thing about the ER at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital is that the waiting room is actually designed for kids. I was worried we would be walking into an episode of The Pitt, where we would be stuck among a sea of strangers, each holding various limbs they were hoping to get reattached. But here the waiting room was built like a spacious hallway, with booths and somewhat enclosed areas for families to sit by themselves and have a small sense of privacy. Every visit to the emergency room is a harrowing experience, but with kids that experience feels slightly more intense, and the last thing you want is for some creep (respectfully) gawking at your distressed kids, and vice versa.

After giving our information to the triage nurse, who told us that they had a dentist in their department without us even asking about one, we hung out for about an hour watching Scooby-Doo (the one where the monster ends up being a dude in a mask) before being escorted to the exam room, which actually seemed like a very reasonable amount of time to be seen. Unlike the waiting room, the exam room wasn’t really kid-oriented at all, with the exception of a TV playing Minions, which probably made the trip to the hospital completely worth it in the minds of my children.

When the doctor came in shortly, his assessment was that my son was probably fine, but at least two of his bottom teeth were concussed and would likely fall out in the coming weeks, and that we should probably go see a dentist. The doctor had the quote unquote “big boss” come in to confirm his findings, and after being in the room for no more than 45 seconds, she said the same thing, and we were very quickly discharged, legitimately relieved to learn that going to the ER had been a complete waste of time. 

After getting home three hours after our adventure began, we realized that despite being told there was a dentist on hand, no dentist ever came in to look at my son’s mouth, and after looking at the hospital’s website, no dentist is even listed as being on staff in that department. This wasn’t a huge deal as we had not anticipated seeing one to begin with, but it was very odd that they told us they had a dentist, and nothing indicates that they do.

When we finally did see a dentist the following Monday, we were told there was a small fracture, but his teeth would probably heal in a couple of weeks without falling out. We were also told that they could have been pushed back into place when the accident occurred, but that it was too late now. His teeth were just going to be a little janky for the next half decade or so. 

Now at this point I know some of you are saying, “Well, why didn’t you take him to an emergency dentist instead of the ER?” And the answer is because I don’t know where or what those are. If blood is flying out of your kid’s mouth, your brain just tells you to go to the emergency room. We even have dental insurance, and there wasn’t a moment where we were like, “OK, hold on a second, I know there’s a small waterfall of blood coming out of this kid’s face right now, but let me research emergency dentists for a half hour and then we can figure out where to go.”

And I’m not the only person who thinks like this. Every year, over a million people go to the ER with dental episodes, because there’s a lot of dum-dums out there like me who somehow think the mouth is part of the human body, which it obviously isn’t, because our for-profit healthcare system insists on this separation. Hospitals aren’t really in the dental emergency business because medical insurance doesn’t cover most dental problems, and why would a dentist work in an ER when they can make a ton of money with their own practice convincing their patients to get procedures they don’t even need? 

Anyway, other than the reason I was actually there, and forgetting how asinine it is that dentistry and medicine are two completely separate fields, I would rate my experience at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital as a positive one. Everyone was very nice and empathetic, and my kid was fully distracted from his injury the whole time he was there. But I would also recommend just doing everything humanly possible to not have to go to the ER to begin with, even though your kids will still probably find a way to make you take them there regardless.

Overall Grade: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Staff Friendliness: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Waiting Room: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Parking Situation: ⭐️

Price: Haven’t got the bill yet, but I bet it’s going to be real cheap.