Coping with distressed and aggressive parents

Abstract 

Illness is distressing, not only for the sick child but for parents worried simultaneously about their child's prognosis and the hospital system they are caught up in. Staff may become just as distressed as those in their care. When badly handled, such distress is easily turned into distrust, to anger and to blame, in parents who feel their complaints are unheard, who feel they have no-one close to turn to, who feel kept in the dark or assaulted by bad news insensitively given, who feel left out of the care of their child and decisions about the future, and who feel discriminated against. The challenge for the paediatrician is to get beyond the defensive stereotypes, to try to understand why the parents of a child have become so angry, and to learn from the experience. Three archetypal ‘cases’ are offered for discussion.

Keywords: children, illness, parents, anger

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• f1 Correspondence to: MS. Tel.: +01873 732 712; Fax.: +01873 859 449. E-mail: jennifer.bendon@gwent.wales.nhs.uk