Communicating a Child's Disabling Diagnosis: Parents' Attitudes Towards the Style and Content of Communication with the Health Professional

The study explores parents' attitudes towards the style and content of communication with the health professional when communicating a child's disabling diagnosis. It addresses issues related to the implementation of a protocol for reporting a diagnosis and takes into account such factors as the communication style of a health care provider with the parents of a child diagnosed with a disabling pathology, the level of parental optimism and social support of the patient's representatives. The empirical basis of the study is a quantitative survey conducted by the research group of theInternational Laboratory for Social Integration Research of the National Research University Higher School of Economics at the request of the Center for Therapeutic Pedagogy among parents of children with disabilities in the Kirov and Novosibirsk regions. The paper presents the results obtained when solving research problems personally by the author. The identified regularities make it possible to argue that parents perceive information about the suspicion of a child's disabling diagnosis in different ways. Patient-oriented communication style and informing families about opportunities for social support, their routing to organizations providing assistance, positively influence the perception of the family's life prospects and opportunities for social integration.