Table 3.

Representative Quotations about Parent Emotional Experience of Communication (N = 20)

Theme	Representative Quotations
Worried (n = 20)	“This is one of the most stressful days a parent will ever have. Handing your child over for surgery, no one is at their best. Everyone is at their kind of weakest moment. You play that lottery … with your most precious commodity, your child.”
Responsible for child’s welfare (n = 15)	“I always say parents are forced to be the case manager.” “Trying to be like old buddy, old pal, just to make her feel calm … once it was all over … I can go back to being a mom.”
Responsible for understanding information (n = 11)	“Oh my gosh I would be scrambling to take notes on everything that they said … So it was hard for me to multitask. I always brought someone with me because I couldn’t manage my child’s care and listen at the same time.”
Strength (n = 8)	“As parents you have to be stronger and you can’t show that to them. Because it’s many a nights that me and her dad have held each other while we cried.”
Dismissed (n = 6)	“I felt really unheard and when I was in the car and we were leaving, I cried.”
Intimidated (n = 5)	“The surgeon’s gone to medical school. They have this prestigious career filled with experience. Parents get intimated by their education, by their title.” “You know, doctors are exalted, right?”
Offended (n = 4)	“He did show us a picture of that how [he] is straight and he did say, ‘what sorority girls won’t like that.’ That off-handed sexual joke about my son wasn’t appropriate.”
Overwhelmed (n = 4)	“When you’re a parent it’s sensory overload when you’re trying to help your kid and you have these really important questions that to the doctor are pretty standard … I don’t do this every day and this is my baby.”
Self-doubt (n = 4)	“We were like, ‘What have we done to her?’ She was in pain, she was crying. We were just always second guessing it.”
Mistrust (n = 4)	“I’ve gotten to the point now that I don’t even trust that. I just don’t even know if they’re saying that because it’s hubris.”
n, number of participants whose interview included this theme.