Sixty years ago, patients rarely questioned the authority of their doctors. Like the doctors portrayed on television, these older, wiser, and usually white male doctors would dispense sage advice to trusting parents desperate to make their children well in an age of polio and measles.
That's no longer the reality. Today, we're in an age when modern medicine can keep kids healthier than ever, yet parents are more anxious about whether they're doing enough to ensure their kids health. In addition, parents unlimited -- and unfiltered -- access to the worst scenarios about what can happen to kids can lead them to question their doctor's advice and forgo recommended vaccinations, antibiotics, and as recently happened in Connecticut, chemotherapy for a 17-year old minor.
Technology hasn't just changed the way parents behave. Kids are also navigating the new terrain of relationships with family, friends and school within the context of social media.
Today, four doctors join guest host Mark Oppenheimer, to talk about the joys and challenges of being a pediatrician, and to answer your questions.
Leave your comments below, tweet us @wnprcolin, or email us at colin@wnpr.org
Mark Oppenheimer is today's guest host. Chion Wolf is the technical producer
GUESTS:
- Dr. Abraham Joe Avni-Singer - pediatrician at Child and Adolescent Health Care in New Haven and Woodbridge and teaches at Yale
- Dr. Marjorie Rosenthal - Pediatrician and health services researcher for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program in Pediatrics at Yale
- Dr. Brad Wilkinson - retired family practice physician who currently works at Malta House
- Dr. James Parker - pediatric emergency physician at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center
