Negative reactions from prescription drugs are causing an uproar with parents, causing them to accuse clinicians of mis-communication, while being concerned whether these side effects impact the child’s medicine use in the future.

The finding, published in PLoS One, came from a team led by Bridget Young from the University of Liverpool, UK after interviewing the parents of 44 kids who had a experienced an adverse response to their medicine.

Previous research in the New England Journal of Medicine indicated that most patients were content with hospital care, but were not satisfied with communication and pain control from doctors.

Results from the current study showed that most of the moms and dads considered the communication from physicians to be unclear, and that the timing of the their discussions were not ideal.

Parents were also worried whether their child’s response to a medicine had an influence on later use of that drug.

Parents whose kids were diagnosed with cancer had very different responses in their interrogation. The majority of them displayed trust in their doctors, and were happy with not only communication regarding treatment risks, but also the way the clinicians managed side effects that occurred.

The rationalization used by doctors to assess the side effects of drugs, the authors explained, seemed to be mirrored when parents linked symptoms to medicines.

Confusion is very common in parents whose sick kids have harmful reactions to their prescribed drugs. This is due to clinicians having only a few existing guidelines that can help them communicate with families properly.

In order to make communication more clear between doctors and parents, the similar thinking observed in the study used by parents and clinicians to associate children’s reactions to drugs can be used as a great starting point, according to the team.

Young concluded:

“Some parents are very distressed by the way clinicians deal with suspected side effects to common medicines and we are now working with clinicians to work out the best way to improve things”.

Written by Sarah Glynn