In line with what I recently told you about communication with the pediatrician, I wanted to tell you an interesting editorial of the electronic information magazine for parents of the Spanish Association of Primary Care Pediatrics very related to the subject.
An interesting reflection from "the other side" that highlights the importance of understand the pediatrician's consultation as a meeting place.
A task not easy in the era of solitary confinement, where we have all the possibilities to know what happens at the other end of the world instantly, but we are not able to tell how we are to our friends.
And of course, there is the time factor in a saturated health system, which in many occasions reduces to a few minutes the time of consultation between one and another patient.
The editorial advocates an approach to families beyond passive listening, for an active implication, an attempt to understand the new types of families that approach the consultation ... And for the peace of mind in the consultation without interruptions or hurries.
All are obstacles in effective communication That, if we remember the last visit to the pediatrician, we probably sound very familiar. But the proposal of the AEPap is very different:
It would be positive to expel from this space that our consultation is excessive notoriety, overwhelming paternalisms and egocentrism. And cultivate active listening, empathy, humility and sincerity above all and by all, families and professionals. The consultation would be an environment that fostered dialogue and mutual understanding, the basis for any medical act, where people who attended would be welcomed with courtesy and kindness.
In that ideal environment, in which of course I include well-trained and updated professionals, the doctor could offer more advice and tools for parents, there would be less distrust, more mutual understanding.
Parents also have to act. As a patient, it has happened to me that the relationship with the doctor has not become fully effective until I have opened communicatively and a better understanding has been established.
Probably in this way we will find some "reluctant" doctors and many clippers in the sanitary infrastructures, but in any case we can claim that space of communication and knowledge.
These are all obstacles for communication with the doctor to be effective and that the pediatrician's consultation be understood as a meeting place, but many professionals fight for it, in short to improve their working conditions and pay better attention to our children, and parents must also claim it.
