This oral history interview with a Salt-Wasting Adrenal Hyperplasia patient demonstrates the importance of direct physician/patient communication with parents as well as with their under-aged children. Throughout the interview, I found that there were positive and negative interactions that suggested a need for improved medical communication training. The most significant was the lack of communication between the patient, who was diagnosed at birth, and the medical professionals. Earlier research shows that most people believe that children are not interested in their medical treatment, but newer studies have found that this is not the case. The patient narrator stated that the doctors would not communicate to him but rather only to his parents, who did not have enough background to understand the medical terminology used. This caused them to leave the appointment confused. Since this was an era before the internet, they were unable to Google any questions or words they did not understand. This left him and his parents in the dark when it came to his medical treatment. Although that was over 40 years ago, I believe this problem still exists in the medical scene today. Although there has been some communication improvement, the evidence uncovered in this interview suggests that medical communication training is needed to improve upon how medical students deal with younger patients.
I am submitting my article for the undergraduate research issue.
Key words: Oral History, Medical Communication
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