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Adoption Medicine
A Specialty You Need to Know By Teri Brown
Sorting It All Out
According to Dr. Simms, an experienced physician who is used to assessing medical records from overseas physicians and institutions may be able to interpret what is important from what is trivial. "Often, foreign trained physicians use medical terminology that is quite different from that used in the U.S.," he says. "In fact, there may be fundamental differences in their understanding of the basis of health and disease between foreign trained and U.S. trained physicians reflected in these diagnostic differences."
Dr. Meg Hayes, family medicine physician for Oregon Health Science University in Portland, Ore., agrees. "The prospective parents frequently have many questions that arise as a result of the information contained in the referral," she says. "Consultation with an adoption medicine specialist can help them to make sense of the information available, formulate questions or requests for additional information or medical evaluation, provide needed medical resources to a waiting child and learn about and prepare for medical evaluation and intervention that may be needed once the child comes home."
Dr. Hayes lists many issues that an adoption specialist can help with:
- Familiarity with a number of medical conditions that are not frequently seen in our patient population such as parasites, infectious diseases and malnutrition.
- Awareness of the orphanage conditions in various countries and what kind of exposures, nurturing, diet and socialization the child experienced there.
- Medical referral source for specialty areas of need, such as cleft palate teams, pediatric cardiology services, endocrine conditions and more.