Weird things happen to children all the time. They eat things they aren’t supposed to and get sick, fall while playing and break parts of their bodies we did not even know existed, but spiking a 104 degree fever and their face swelling to the size of a grapefruit is not one of those things. This was unfortunately the situation my parents were in when I was two and a half and diagnosed with Fibrous Dysplasia, a disease that affects one in three million individuals. Hurrying home from a cruise where seeking proper medical care was not an option, my parents rushed their sick child to a local emergency room. After discussing the symptoms with the emergency room doctor, they were given information that this was just a sinus infection and would go
…show more content…
This difficult conversation, with the message being “we are diagnosing your daughter with fibrous dysplasia, a one in three million people disease that is not terminal, but will be a chronic condition that will require life long care and follow up surgeries” and then returning back to the operating room to complete the surgery, was a terrible example of informing the family. Coming out of a surgery in white coats into a surgical waiting room added even more tension to this conversation. This was not the ideal setting as there were other families around. The participants in this conversation were my parents and the surgeons performing this surgery, but there were other unwanted participants nearby. Erving Goffman defines these “overhearers” as “unratified participants” (O’Driscoll, 2009). This was an unnecessary piece to the puzzle of the sender being the provider and the receivers being my parents. Sharing news like this to parents cannot be easy for a provider, but utilizing a biomedical model, which means the “ill health can be explained, identified, and treated through physical means”, was not the best choice (Du Pré, A., 2017). By sharing the news in a scientific manner, the providers neglected to consider the additional context of where my parents were coming from. My mom and dad, who had recently been given news about a sick niece, had this in mind when the …show more content…
Even though this interaction took place over twenty years ago, there was no reason that more concern for emotions and a more patient and family centered conversation could have occurred. When looking at McGuire’s Five Factors that Influence Communication Effectiveness, each one of them has an important relation to this specific difficult conversation. The first factor, the message, looks at what type of message will work and be the most effective. In this case, the message may have been appropriate in the surgeon’s eyes because they were simply reporting a medical finding to my parents, but that message was not decoded successfully by my parents, as my dad fainted when hearing it. Sharing news in the manner they did warranted shock and sadness. The second factor is the receiver. In this case, my parents were the receivers of the message and unfortunately they were not in a sufficient state to comprehend the communication. Since they had recently found out of my dad’s niece's poor health, their current attitude and beliefs were not in a positive place. Additionally, my parents had been told their daughter had been the youngest person in the United States ever diagnosed with Fibrous Dysplasia. They did not comprehend this as they did not have a high level of health literacy. These medical terms meant nothing to them because they only wanted to know if it was terminal or not. When reflecting on
This difficult conversation, with the message being “we are diagnosing your daughter with fibrous dysplasia, a one in three million people disease that is not terminal, but will be a chronic condition that will require life long care and follow up surgeries” and then returning back to the operating room to complete the surgery, was a terrible example of informing the family. Coming out of a surgery in white coats into a surgical waiting room added even more tension to this conversation. This was not the ideal setting as there were other families around. The participants in this conversation were my parents and the surgeons performing this surgery, but there were other unwanted participants nearby. Erving Goffman defines these “overhearers” as “unratified participants” (O’Driscoll, 2009). This was an unnecessary piece to the puzzle of the sender being the provider and the receivers being my parents. Sharing news like this to parents cannot be easy for a provider, but utilizing a biomedical model, which means the “ill health can be explained, identified, and treated through physical means”, was not the best choice (Du Pré, A., 2017). By sharing the news in a scientific manner, the providers neglected to consider the additional context of where my parents were coming from. My mom and dad, who had recently been given news about a sick niece, had this in mind when the …show more content…
Even though this interaction took place over twenty years ago, there was no reason that more concern for emotions and a more patient and family centered conversation could have occurred. When looking at McGuire’s Five Factors that Influence Communication Effectiveness, each one of them has an important relation to this specific difficult conversation. The first factor, the message, looks at what type of message will work and be the most effective. In this case, the message may have been appropriate in the surgeon’s eyes because they were simply reporting a medical finding to my parents, but that message was not decoded successfully by my parents, as my dad fainted when hearing it. Sharing news in the manner they did warranted shock and sadness. The second factor is the receiver. In this case, my parents were the receivers of the message and unfortunately they were not in a sufficient state to comprehend the communication. Since they had recently found out of my dad’s niece's poor health, their current attitude and beliefs were not in a positive place. Additionally, my parents had been told their daughter had been the youngest person in the United States ever diagnosed with Fibrous Dysplasia. They did not comprehend this as they did not have a high level of health literacy. These medical terms meant nothing to them because they only wanted to know if it was terminal or not. When reflecting on