We all have been children.
Your experience as a child is a treasure!
You are an expert!
Whenever I tell the medical student, who attends my clinic, “You are an expert!” they look back at me in disbelief.
This idea always catches them by surprise because they are so used to their role as learner, they typically think that they don’t know anything.
What kind of expert are you?
The medical students already come with a wealth of experience.
They have been toddlers, children, and teenagers.
They have siblings (or not). So, they know how that feels.
Not only that, but they have experiences with authorities, good ones and bad ones.
Likewise, everybody knows how it feels, when adults are talking among themselves, and they have been made to wait.
They are so boring, these family events, when the elderly start chatting about the good old times, and you stare blank because this doesn’t relate to you.
What to do with that experience?
When we dare to dig into our own treasure of past emotions and even past struggles, we often develop a better understanding of the world view of the paediatric patient.
Our past can help us to flip the perspective and to step in the patients’ shoes. In my opinion, the treasure of the personal experience, allows us to start to see the world with the child’s eyes.
Treasure and use your experience!
All the people whom we have seen as good authorities may function as role models.
And bad experiences, with negative authorities can help us to understand what approach to avoid.
In a nutshell:
Our own experiences form the base for the understanding of the child’s experience.
Communication lives on comments … fancy to share yours?