Training for Paediatricians and Paediatric Students

2.2 Appropriate Language

Not all parents have a good educational and intelligence level. Explaining things in simple, clear, and direct language is very important. Clarity and directness are particularly important with parents of limited health literacy. Most patients are not familiar with the medical terms and 89-93% of doctors fail to check if they understood the explanation or not. Therefore, patients memorize only 50-60% of the information provided. Parents may have trouble following dosing and care instructions, calculating the correct amount of medication to take and reading nutrition labels. Simple language is a strategy that can be applied on both written and verbal communication. There are many useful and effective techniques to make communication with parents easier. Using simple words, short sentences and explaining medical jargon constitute the first step in avoiding misunderstandings. Breaking complex information in short statements and providing the most important information first and later focusing on the two or three most important concepts can also be helpful to parents, especially if they have no possibility to take notes. Visual aids like drawings, models and diagrams might facilitate better understanding of biological facts and statistics. Social paediatrics: clear communication is essential both among doctors and in medical-patient relationships. This demand often reflects simple phrasing, grammatical structures, and the health literacy of the laic parent. The medical opinion formulated in understandable language about the diagnosis and the basic necessity of the therapy, it is important to know the socio-economic environment in order to find the necessary and sufficient standard which reflects to the environment from where the small patient and his parents come. Social paediatrics takes into account not only issues related to direct illness and treatment, but also covers the social causes and consequences of the child's health problems, thereby expanding the range of intra- and interpersonal factors with macro and environmental factors. Communication is therefore a combination of educational and informative elements.

Practical Applications

• Communicating with children in absence of their parentsIt often happens that the child arrives in the clinic without adult company or the parent is not present at the examination when the doctor is in the school. In this case, it may be difficult for a doctor or a healthcare staff to diagnose or adequately communicate the therapy

Online Resources

• Parang N Mehta: Communication Skills – Talking to Parents Good communication is an art that is so far acquired, developed and improved by experience. However, it can also be taught, and assessed, by means of structured programs
• Marcia Levetown and the Committee on Bioethics: Communicating With Children and Families: From Everyday Interactions to Skill in Conveying Distressing InformationThis article provides a review of the evidence regarding clinical communication in the pediatric setting, covering the spectrum from outpatient primary care consultation to death notification, and provides practical suggestions to improve communication with patients and families, enabling more effective, efficient, and empathic pediatric health care.