Parents' no-win situation. If you bring them in early, they say leave it a few days and see. Other themes discovered were a feeling of power imbalance between parent and physician and feeling excluded from the doctor's assessment as if there were a mystique about the diagnosis that they could not share. Parents felt uncomfortable questioning the doctor's authority and reported leaving with questions unanswered. Parents acknowledged their lack of medical skill and wanted to be educated, either by a physician or through printed or video information on managing simple conditions and recognizing more serious signs and symptoms.
Respondent validation can alleviate one of the main limitations of qualitative research.
Through it, the interpretations of one person are exposed to an outside check. It is particularly important here because the researcher, a middle-class male professional, was somewhat removed from his subjects' situation. A limitation inherent in all qualitative research is a lack of generalizability. The mothers from this disadvantaged community, however, are similar to many of our patients these days. Also, intuitively, the author's conclusions seem to make sense for all parents dealing with the health care system.