International articleChronically ill adolescents’ experiences of communicating with doctors: a qualitative study
Section snippets
Methods
The research design reflected the need to: adopt an exploratory approach to this under-researched area; to develop methodologies that were appropriate to the research question; and to work directly with chronically ill adolescents (as opposed to using proxy informants). A qualitative approach was therefore chosen. The project was conducted in the United Kingdom (UK) and took place between 1997 and 1999.
Results
A key initial finding was the range and number of factors that were found to be involved in influencing adolescents’ experiences of communicating with their doctor. These factors, summarized in Table 1, have been organized around six interrelated themes: features of the encounter; parental presence; issues of status; ‘doctor-centered’ factors; ‘adolescent-centered’ factors; and the type of information needed.
Discussion and conclusions
The findings from this project suggest that communication and information exchange between chronically ill adolescents and their hospital doctors can be jeopardized by a number of factors. The fact that the experiences of participants recruited from different locations were essentially similar suggests that difficulties of communication between doctors and chronically ill adolescents are widespread. In addition, the energy with which participants considered and explored this issue with the
Acknowledgements
Research funding body: NHS (Executive), UK; Research & Development Programme (Mother and Child Health): Project Number MCH: 16-12.
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