Our Rights, Our Story - Funky Dragon

H E A L T H
Embarrassment
Some young people felt embarrassment and even shame when talking to doctors about
their health issues, one young person from Powys explained that ‘(I) feel out of place and
stupid and so not comfortable discussing my health’ and another that she was ‘Ashamed of
having a baby’, another young person expressed ‘Humiliation for suicide attempts - made to
strip clothes to check for scarring - very very uncomfortable.’
Being spoken to directly
Some young people were not spoken to directly; in Anglesey one referred to health
professionals ‘Talking to parents instead of me!’ and another explained ‘My mother had a
bad back and couldn’t get to the phone; they refused to speak to me and said they needed
to speak to her directly’. On the flip side young people offered compliments:‘Orthodontist
Doctor talked to me and told me what was going on’ and ‘Dentist - good, talks to me’.
Unable to understand what was being said
Some young people didn’t understand what was being said to them and there appeared to
be three main reasons for this:
Firstly,young people often didn’t understand the medical language used by doctors but
were quick to express their appreciation when they were given good explanations ‘Doctors
use long words - feel stupid because you don’t understand’ and ‘Don’t explain things
properly - long words (and get stressed)’. ‘Sometimes they do explain things so you do
understand, depends on doctors’,‘Doctors - kind easy to understand’ and ‘Nurse - really nice
told me what the injection was for, friendly, talked to me not over my head’.
Secondly,young people did not feel listened to. In Conwy one young person’s concerns
were about ‘Doctors not taking you seriously’, in Denbighshire ‘Dentists ignore me - put a
brace on me even though I didn’t want it/need it’ and in Bridgend ‘Don’t listen to you
properly and don’t try to understand you’.
Thirdly,young people didn’t understand what the doctor was saying to them because of
language difficulties. One young person from Caerphilly explained ‘All my doctors are
foreign + I find it extremely hard to understand them’ and in Swansea one young person
said that they had been looked after by someone who ‘didn’t speak English! ‘. Some of the
comments made were expressed as racial prejudices rather than as language difficulties,
such as ‘Forren doctors/nurses/dentists don’t understand the problem’,‘Brain surgeon was
very quiet and unsympathetic – but he was Italian’ and ‘not enough white doctors’.
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