Like so many others, I do not remember the nurse or doctor ever telling ME. I believe that my mother was usually told the number, in the same way that she would tell the nurse what my temperature had been at home earlier if I was there for a sick visit. I wouldn't have understood what the actual number meant anyway until I was much older.
However, I think this example highlights the tendency in medicine, at least during the time I was growing up, to view children solely as the object of examination and treatment, rather than subjects in their own right. I had the opportunity to speak to my pediatrician right before he retired from practice. I was an adult by then and probably hadn't seen him for more than 15 years. I doubt he actually really remembered me, and the one thing I vividly remember him telling me was that it was the mothers he remembered more than anything.
This makes sense to me since my mom was really the one he conversed with, both while examining me and later in his office, while I was merely the body being poked and prodded and then a bored bystander ready to get out of there as soon as possible. I would have been too nervous and afraid to ask questions of the nurse or doctor as a child, even if I had known what questions to ask.
As an adult I have gradually become more comfortable asking questions, but I find myself more at ease in making inquiries when the doctor or nurse provides at least a little information to begin with, such as my pulse or blood pressure. I think my early experiences of feeling passive and uninvolved in the conversation have made it more difficult for me to feel comfortable taking a more active role in health care discussions with most of the doctors I have seen as an adult. Deep down I think I still feel very much like that scared, voiceless little girl lying on the exam table expecting to be talked about and talked over, rather than talked to and talked with.