<p>Doctors cannot assume what a patient or parent of a patient knows. The level of understanding/education of a patient or parent of a patient that walks into a doctors office runs the gamut from very uneducated to very educated to very educated but not knowledgable about health related matters. There ARE people and children who need to hear how and why you should cross the street safely and practice safe swimming.</p>
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<p>yes! Sadly, today we have admitted a young man 30 years old who has not seen a doctor since he was 12. well, apparently he has suffered from the silent killer, hypertension, for enough years to have now destroyed his kidneys. He will now become a dialysis patient at a very young age and his future now is fairly bleak. He is of an ethnic group in whose male members are majorly hypertensive. I’d be willing to bet his pediatrician/family doctor counseled them about this when he was a child, told them to keep track of his blood pressure, etc. Yet…
So yeah, I can see why doctors tell people all kinds of ways to keep kids safe and healthy. All of us here are simply on a different playing field than many.</p>