How to communicate with your child's doctor
By DR. LUDWIG VON HAHN
Published: Monday, December 4, 2006
If the encounter doesn’t go as well as you’d hoped for, try and remember that you and the physician both want what’s best for your child.
A number of parents of special needs children have told me stories about their interactions with physicians and how they have been frustrated at times when they didnot receive the information they felt they needed, or that the interaction with the doctor was less than they had hoped for.
My interactions with other professionals don’t always go as well as I’d hoped for either. I don’t always know how to communicate with my car mechanic, for example, and I sometimes leave the garage feeling confused about conflicting pieces of information I might have received, or I might worry I’m not getting all of the information that I really need.
You may feel the same way about talking with your physician, and may leave the physician’s office feeling insecure and uncertain as well. Perhaps you didn’t understand what the physician said. Perhaps you aren’t really sure what questions you were supposed to ask. If your physician told you something important or worrisome about your child, you might have had a strong emotional reaction, and then had been unable to focus on what he or she said after that.
If the encounter doesn’t go as well as you’d hoped for, try and remember that you and the physician both want what’s best for your child. Forgive yourself and your physician if you were confused, or if he or she was confusing. Try discussing the topic again. Communication improves as you learn more about your child and about your child’s physician. As you gain confidence in your own communication skills, you might even be able to teach your child’s physician to communicate better with you!
The following suggestions might help improve interactions between you and your child’s physician. These suggestions might be more useful to you if your child has a disability, but some of the suggestions that follow are true regardless of what condition your child might have.
1. Make sure you know what you want to know.
The following are the types of questions that you should typically bring to your physician:
* What medical or psychiatric condition explains why my child is different? (diagnosis)
* What happens to children with this condition? (prognosis)
* How is this condition treated? (treatment)
* Do the treatments have any side effects? (treatment)
* Regardless of whether or not there are medical treatments for the condition itself, how do I help my child live his or her life as successfully as possible? Should I still expect my child to take care of his/her activities of daily living? Can I ask my child to do some chores, as I would expect other children his/her age to do? What expectations can I place on my child in the school setting?
* Where do I go for additional information about this condition, and about the services available for children with this condition? Does the physician know of any parent support groups, Web sites, or service agencies who could help?
2. Make sure your physician knows what you need to know.
Write out three questions in advance and make sure your physician knows that you need answers to those questions before you leave. If you can get your physician to answer more than three questions that’s great, but if that’s not possible, save the unanswered questions for next time.
Avoid hidden questions and be willing to ask the scary questions. Will my child be able to walk? Will they have mental retardation? Could my child die from this condition? Your physician won’t know what information you need the most, unless you state it clearly.
3. Help your physician learn about you.
Be realistic about yourself and share this information with your physician. If you don’t understand your physician, say so. If you don’t understand how to give the medication, ask him or her to write it down. If you are too busy to do all of the things that your physician said you should do, make sure your physician knows.
Tell your doctor if you can’t afford certain things for your child because of financial problems. Or, let your physician know if you hold religious or philosophical beliefs that might not fit with the suggestions your physician made. Ask your doctor if you can follow his suggestion another way, or if he or she can make a different suggestion.
4. Wait and see how your physician responds.
If you obtained the information you needed, congratulations! If you did not obtain the information you needed, think about why this occurred. Did you ask the question clearly enough? Was the physician listening when you asked the question? Can you ask the question again or at the next visit? Can you ask it another way? Should you use a different kind of communication, such as leaving a note for the physician, using a nurse to ask the question, or having someone else come with you to ask the question at the next visit?
If your physician cannot answer your question, ask him or her who can answer the question.
5. Experience counts.
Don’t worry if your communication doesn’t go as expected. If you think your physician has your child’s interests at heart, and you think you can work with him or her, give yourself some time to get to know him or her, and take some extra time to obtain the information you need. What seems important today might seem less important tomorrow. Those things that really are important will come up again and can be addressed at future visits. You won’t know it all right away, but you have plenty of time to learn about your child and his or her needs.
Ludwig von Hahn M.D. (ludwig.vonhahn@crotchedmountain.org) is the director of medical outreach services at Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center in Greenfield, NH. He is a developmental pediatrician with full fellowship training in child psychiatry. For more information about Crotched Mountain please visit www.crotchedmountain.org.