Paediatric Patient Communication

Becoming a doctor involves years of intensive study, mastering complex medical knowledge, understanding pharmacology, and learning how to manage a wide range of conditions.

But when it comes to interacting with young patients, effective paediatric communication skills are just as crucial. How do you explain medical procedures to children in a way that’s both clear and comforting? 

The doctor’s office or the hospital can be scary and intimidating for young patients, with an unfamiliar environment and many noisy machines. There will probably be lots of different faces, from the receptionists and other patients to the nurses and the doctors. Knowing how to talk to children can be challenging, so we’ve put together some tips that may help with effective communication with children in the hospital. 

Our infant and paediatric manikins are designed to help healthcare students and professionals develop essential clinical skills through realistic, hands-on training. These high-quality paediatric simulators allow you to safely practise a range of procedures such as infant airway management, paediatric CPR, intubation, injection techniques, catheterisation, and general physical examinations. With our infant simulators, you can practice examinations and procedures such as OP airway insertion on a realistic child manikin. 

By working with lifelike models, you gain a clear understanding of what it feels like to perform these procedures on real patients - helping you build confidence, accuracy, and muscle memory. This means that when you’re faced with performing these skills in a real-world paediatric setting, you're far less likely to make errors. 

Confidence is key, especially when treating children. Young patients can quickly sense if you're unsure or nervous. By mastering these procedures through simulation, you're more likely to appear calm, capable, and trustworthy, making the experience more positive for both the child and their family. 

An easy mistake to make when having a consultation with a young child is to talk to the parents or carers of the child instead while ignoring the child during the consultation. Depending on the age of the patient, of course, it can make all the difference if you involve the child in their own healthcare. For younger patients, you can start consultations by asking, “Do you know why daddy brought you here to the doctors today?” for example. You may be able to pick up new symptoms that the parents/carers have not caught themselves, but equally importantly, you establish trust between yourself and the little patient, making them feel relaxed and in control of the situation – to quell their panic. Crucially, this allows these patients to grow up confident in taking responsibility for their own health so that they have greater trust in the doctors when they are older. 

For teenagers and older children, the majority of the consultation should be between you and them. Although parents may be keen to do the talking, give teenagers the opportunity to explain their symptoms. They may not have told their parents the whole set of symptoms, and their parents may not know the full story. 

By talking to the child and including them in their consultations, you allow them to develop autonomy regarding their own care and help to establish trust. 

The joy of working with children is that it’s totally okay to drop the uptight mannerisms of a finely educated academic and have some fun – without being judged by society. But play isn’t just for fun. In fact, particularly with younger children, play is such an important way to break ground. Take a minute out before you start your consultation to play a little game with your paediatric patient or demonstrate a magic trick which can dissolve the scary image of a doctor that the child has in their mind. The children will be more relaxed and comfortable, and procedures such as taking blood will be much easier for you with less wriggling and running away. Playing also reduces feelings of anxiety children may have when coming to an unfamiliar and scary setting and makes the experience much more pleasant for the patient. Children have so much energy – for the first few moments of your consultation, you can relax a little and match their energy to let them know that they can trust you. 

Anatomical models can be especially effective in helping children understand their bodies and medical conditions during clinic visits. These hands-on tools allow healthcare professionals to explain procedures or anatomy in a simple, visual way that children can see and touch. By turning abstract concepts into something tangible, models can reduce fear, encourage curiosity, and help children feel more involved in their own care. 

Whether you are carrying out a procedure like a blood test or conducting a paediatric examination, you can get the children to feel more at ease by asking them to help you do your job. For example, you can ask the children to hold the piece of cotton wool while you inject them and pass it to you afterwards so that you can cover the injection site. Asking children to ‘help you’ hear their heart sounds with your stethoscope can make them feel important and establishes them at the centre of their own healthcare, making the doctor-child relationship one that is trusting and respectful. 

The hospital can be a daunting place, with unfamiliar people and machines for adults, let alone children. Visual boards are ways of presenting information in simplified visual formats that can help worried patients understand their surroundings. You could have a visual board with various pictures that show the sequence of everything the child will see or experience in their examination, starting from the very beginning of entering the hospital. For example, the first picture could show a hospital receptionist with a number one next to it. Number two could be the doctor’s door, which the child would have just walked through. Picture three would be the doctor’s chair that the patient would sit on, and so on, with the final picture being a picture of a sticker that a child will receive after the examination is complete. 

Displaying this visual board to the children at the start of the examination can remove the confusion surrounding the consultation and helps the child to easily know what to anticipate next in the examination so they are not worried. The fact that children can see on the visual board that they will get a sticker at the end of the consultation reassures them that there is something waiting for them for their good behaviour at the end and should help them stay calm throughout. 

Anatomical posters can be a valuable tool in clinics when communicating health information to children. Bright, engaging visuals tailored to a younger audience can help make complex topics - like how the lungs work - feel more accessible and less intimidating. Displaying clear, age-appropriate charts in waiting or consultation rooms can spark curiosity and open up conversations between healthcare professionals, children, and their families. These visual aids not only support understanding but can also help reduce anxiety by offering a friendly, educational environment.

While younger children may like to be spoken to in a more fun and playful tone of voice, patients who are developmentally at the age of teenagers may find this patronising and may feel disrespected. Older teenagers should be spoken to with the same respect that you would show as if you were speaking to an adult, although time should be taken to explain some concepts in more detail if they are likely to be unfamiliar with them. 

Although tip number one was to speak to the children themselves, children can be shy or may want to hide the extent of their symptoms to appear tougher or out of embarrassment. In the majority of cases, parents or carers know their child best and will be able to give an accurate history and describe symptoms. It is often said in paediatrics that when a mother of a child with complex health needs has a gut feeling that something is wrong, the mother is usually correct. Listening to parents will save you time in reaching a diagnosis and will often allow you to treat your patients based on more accurate symptoms. 

You can help distract the child from the scary environment of a healthcare setting by asking them about anything else that is not related to their health or illness. For example, you could ask them about their favourite superhero, how school is going, or what artwork they have done at home recently. This helps the child to be in a good frame of mind for the procedure or consultation and can help you to gain their trust as a clinician. 

Our final tip for communicating and working with paediatric patients is to work for a child’s smile. Paediatrics is a demanding career but seeing a child smile and want to hug you makes the job all worth it!