Many times communication with our children's pediatrician is not what we would like. I am not talking about the usual and routine baby check-ups, but about those cases where we need (or believe we need) the doctor. Do you have the opportunity to contact him directly?
I mean, of course, during “office” or consultation hours, because I understand that if something important arises to need help outside these hours, we would call Emergencies directly or go to a hospital.
Most of us have to make an appointment through assistants who do not know how to advise us on whether it is necessary to go to the pediatrician or not. The baby has some pimples, has a fever, vomiting with these or such characteristics ...
Especially for first-time parents these situations are disconcerting. We would love to speak directly with the pediatrician, although the logical thing is that he himself tells us that without seeing the baby can not make a diagnosis.
And, on the other hand, if we have not run to the emergency room, it is that these pimples, that fever or those vomiting do not seem serious enough to take these other measures.
Some pediatricians give their patients a direct telephone number to contact him (which they will obviously have disconnected when they cannot attend, or that will establish certain time slots to attend).
My daughter's pediatrician does put a mobile phone in the documents she gives us. I would love to have called my children's pediatrician on more than one occasion, although I only did it once, the time I considered it was really necessary and also the doctor would remember our case for having been in the consultation just the previous afternoon.
He himself pointed out that our call had been very timely and necessary. He ordered us to stop the medication, and to the ER (he was not in the consultation at that time).
Communication with pediatricians outside the consultation
As we mentioned, parents would like to communicate with pediatricians online, I think in a desire to feel more secure and taken care of. Parents would also like to communicate more often with pediatricians by any other means.
Precisely the doctors observed that via internet (or via telephone ...) no diagnoses can be made, which I agree with; But it is that we are not talking about diagnosing but rather that I believe that in the first place we have a person to rely on and trust in a situation that is unknown to us and makes us uneasy.
On the other hand, I put myself in the place of pediatricians and I realize that I don't give the particular phone number to my students or their parents. But of course, in the case of the profession of teacher I do not believe that there is any urgency, and parents know that they can call the center to locate me in the case of wanting to talk to me on any subject.
Of course, the issue changes when we talk about the relationship parents-children and doctors-patients, or at least it seems to me, although the job that is mainly sought in pediatricians when those calls occur (as in many meetings with parents of students) many times be the friend-advisor-listener
In any case, sometimes contact the pediatrician It can be a first performance, a first tranquility or a first orientation. Even a first step to tackle a problem that we have not detected as serious.
Surely many parents will have a relationship of trust with the doctor that does not prevent a more fluid "extra-consultation" communication, although others notice more impediments.
