To tell you the truth: children reflect on hospital care.

Children enter hospitals as novices and leave them as social critics. Their "take" on the environment and their reaction to care received are outcome measures too often neglected in our fast-paced health care arena. This article publishes the evaluations of these young patients to an audience of health professionals ... practitioners who might be moved by such poignant expressions of thanks and motivated by such thoughtful prescriptions for reform. Much of the data were gathered during the development of the Web site, "Band-Aides and Blackboards: When Chronic Illness ... Or Some Other Medical Problem ... Goes to School."