Autumn J O'Brien, MD

While Dr O'Brien is generous with her time she does not seem to really listen to parents. She is interested only in the things that she wants to hear. She imagined a problem for my child and from the moment when she had made up her mind she refused to intake any new information in order to nuance her view. As a consequence, she heavily abuses the free state testing services when a child falls off of her view of 'normalcy'. It is good to be a cautious doctor, but she is able to throw at your face pretty serious diagnostics instead of pondering a bit on the circumstances. My kid is a shy late talker. She diagnosed him with a language delay and suggested that he was "on the spectrum". He passed with flying colors all the tests in a speech and hearing evaluation and demonstrated a vocabulary of about 600 words in his two languages. He just didn't like her and did not want to talk to her. Me, as well as the daycare staff, are astounded that Dr O'Brien failed to recognize an uncooperating, bratty and bored at that moment kid.

My youngest (of 3) is a small child - as were her older siblings, her parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, etc. Instead of relying on the obvious genetic trend, Dr. O'Brien took it upon herself to accuse my husband and I of just not feeding our child. Despite our daughter having reached all of her milestones early, Dr. O'Brien ordered tests, including full body x-rays, and labeled our child a "failure to thrive." The prescription for such tests were explained as being valid for 90 days. When I hadn't accomplished getting the testing done within a week, she wrote a letter accusing me of not caring about my daughter's welfare and dismissed me from her practice (making sure she emphasized how she had never had to take such extreme measures before). She also had failed to diagnose a hernia my daughter has. One that is not only easily apparent, but also runs in my family - one that her brother had fixed a few years ago.Dr. O'Brien, unfortunately, appears to only see reality the way she wants to see it. She, obviously, does not take genetics into account when trying to diagnose a patient - which is frightening to me, to say the least. I highly recommend finding another doctor unless your child is the "perfect norm."