What do the children of physicians learn from their parents? How should medical information be presented to them? Are doctors' kids, in some respects, growing up too fast?
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A recent poignant article described the experiences Dr Heather Thompson Buum, whose diagnosis of breast cancer brought with it the startling realization of just how much medical information her young children had absorbed. Her candid reflection on that experience with her own children led to much discussion in the comments from a wide variety of Medscape's readers.
All were sympathetic toward and supportive of Thompson. The discussion ranged from how children deal with a parent's health problems to the unique perspective that the children of healthcare professionals have about medical information.
Most agreed that it was important to be straight with kids about medical matters. A pathologist wrote:
My husband and I are both doctors, and we always tried to inform our children as honestly as we could of every matter dealing with our family's health. That helped a lot with their understanding and dealing with issues that ranged from vaccines to the passing away of grandparents and our own health problems.
A dual-physician family found that knowledge seeped to the younger generation, often without formal instruction.
