I realised recently whilst on my paediatric patient that one of the most important skills to learn when treating children is how to deal with their parents.
On one particular occasion I was treating a young girl who was day one post surgery on her lower thigh. Before even entering her room her mother warned me that she wasn't happy for me to be seeing her daughter that day due to the amount of pain that she was in. I tried to assure her that her daughter had adequate pain relief and that I would be very gentle with her leg. The young girl was obviously distressed and I felt like the problem was only compounded by the fact that her parents were so anxious and always questioning what I was doing with their daughter, even though I was only doing gentle passive movements. I did not feel like I got much done in that session and felt like I had not done a good job.
For my next session with the girl that afternoon, I organised for one of the nursing staff to have a chat to the parents outside of the room whilst I did my session. I thought that I might be able to build more of a raport with the girl and allow her to become more calm if her parents were not in the room. I ended up having a very productive session and by the time her parents entered the room we had achieved good ROM on her affected leg and I was able to run through her exercises with her parents.
Although it can be EXTREMELY adventagious to make use of parents to help during a treatment session, I have also realised that on occasions it is better for parents not to be present. If they become too emotional and distressed it greatly influences the child's mood and how well they are going to participate. I realise though, that asking a child's parents to leave during a session could seem rude and confrontational and would need to be approached with a lot of tact and respect. By asking other staff to help to take the parents away for a while I did not have to ask the parents directly to leave, which I found to be a good approach to the problem.
I would be very interested to see if anyone else has encountered a problem like this on any of their pracs and to see if they used a similar approach to mine. I would also be interested to know if anyone has had to directly ask any parents to leave and how they went about this!
Fantastic thinking! Avoiding confrontation is the key! I found dealing with parents a huge skill that I hadnt really thought about until my paediatrics placement. If there is one skill that I developed the most on my placement it would be that. Explaining pathologies, clinical pathways and treatments was always a challenge, especially to the protective parent. I also found it interesting to see all the different methods of parenting used. My heart goes out to the parents of severly disabled children. To watch them care for their children every hour of the day, day in, day out, they all deserve a medal. That is what I call heroic, no one dreams of having a disabled child. It was magic to see in cases of really high dependence, how mums find happiness.
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