Every parent knows the following scenario - you get to the doctor, wait in line and by the time It’s finally your turn, the doctor tries to be as quick as possible in order to move on to the next patient. Parents who experience appointments like these are many times left confused and with unanswered questions which may be particularly important.
For you to get a clearer view of pediatricians, it is important that you know 12 things that they don’t always tell you, but that every parent should know. That way, you’ll leave your doctor's office less confused than you might have done otherwise:
Most vaccines are administered in crowded doctors' offices, so there isn’t always time to numb the injection area and minimize the pain. If you want your child to get through the vaccination safely and with minimal pain, ask that the area be sprayed with a cooling spray or a numbing cream. With nursing infants and toddlers, ask your nurse or doctor if you can breastfeed them during the vaccination to distract them and ease the pain.
Many parents that have two children look to shorten the processes and ask the doctor to take a look at both of them, even though only one of them has an appointment. This behavior is not acceptable to most doctors and can be easily overcome if two consecutive appointments are made and arrived at on time. This way, each child will receive all the attention he deserves, without being split due to a lack of time and other small patients waiting in line.
Despite their goodwill, doctors usually have less than 10 minutes to check each patient, regardless of whether it's a 30-year-old or a 3-year-old. Prepare the most important questions that you need to ask your pediatrician to ensure that he answers them in full and gives you the assistance you need.
In emergency rooms, things can things can get quite hectic when many patients turn up at once. As a result, you should speak to a nurse should your child be admitted to hospital in an emergency.
If your child has a high fever (over 100 degrees), is convulsing or has any other physical symptom, you need to head straight to the hospital and make the first nurse you can find aware of his or her plight.
Many parents think that if they give their child medicine before visiting the doctor, it will relieve the symptoms, which will make it difficult for the doctor to see them causing the pediatrician to not believe that something is wrong. But this is not right! Therefore, if your child is suffering from fever, nasal congestion, phlegm and anything else that you have a non-prescription medicine for, it is recommended that you administer it before your doctor's appointment arrives.
When you get to the doctor, tell him what your child's symptoms are and exactly what medications you have given him so that he can diagnose it accurately. In this situation, your child will also feel better and will be able to tell what he or she feels, which will give the doctor a detailed picture of his or her condition.
Being a pediatrician is a particularly challenging profession, and although it is sometimes difficult to hide our fears (as parents), it is important that you filter your words before you speak. If your child has to get his ears checked, don’t tell the doctor, "He doesn’t like when his ears are looked at", because regardless of whether it's true or not, your child will start to worry and the examination will be unpleasant for him. Therefore, when you are going with your child to the pediatrician, try to maintain a positive attitude for him so that he can get through the tests and treatment, stress and concern free.
The pediatrician's waiting room is furnished to accommodate children, and various toys and play areas can be found in it. As you might expect, these toys are covered with quite a few germs of sick children who have touched them, and they may infect your children with various diseases, so try bringing them a toy from home to play with instead.
Alternatively, you can bring a natural hand sanitizer which you can prepare yourself and clean your child's hands with it after playing with the toys in the waiting room.
Children are small, but they are sharp-minded and know when they’re being lied to. Every time a doctor or parent says, "It won’t hurt," your child knows perfectly well that the vaccine, injection or test can hurt, and then he becomes stress and stiffens. Therefore, if doctors don’t give this warning, it's not because they are insensitive, but because they don’t want to make your child feel unpleasant and hurt him even before something is done.
There’s no doubt that the Internet is an inexhaustible source of knowledge, but it does not have the experience of any doctor in the world, and you shouldn’t try to make it a diagnostic tool for your child to determine what he has or doesn’t have.
If you want to do a preliminary study of symptoms or learn more about your child's condition after a doctor has examined them, there’s no problem, but do not try to diagnose exactly what your child has, because in most cases you’ll stress yourself out in vain and as a result your child as well.
If you think your doctor prescribed you a particularly expensive medicine just to get money out of you, think again. In most cases, they aren’t even aware of the prices of drugs and prescribe them because of their medical specifications and not for any other reason.
Therefore, if a doctor prescribed a drug and you found that it is more expensive than you originally thought, you can contact him to get a prescription for a similar or generic version of the drug which is usually cheaper.
If your child is eloquent and articulate, it will certainly help him later in life, but in most cases, it is not possible to rely only on what he tells the doctor. When you arrive at your child's pediatrician, try to put the phone aside and be attentive while he is examined. Parents can provide a doctor with more effective and vital information than a child can, as usually they don’t have the vocabulary to describe their symptoms in detail.
Pediatricians treat not only young children and toddlers but also teenagers who are often closed off to their parents or prefer to keep certain things to themselves. When you suspect that your child is experiencing depression or is sick and needs to be checked, you should leave him alone with the doctor in the room. Teenagers are more open to doctors when their parents are not around, and they tend to tell personal things that are embarrassing to tell their parents and which can be vital for diagnosing their physical or mental condition.
