general peds questions

[finnpipette]

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I'm finishing up my first rotation in peds and I've got to say it has been an amazing experience. My heart falls in love and is broken every day. I wipe away the tears, pick myself up and take care of the next sick kid. Anyhow, just a couple quick questions.

1.) Is the general peds market over-saturated? I have no interest in sub-specializing, but I don't want to worry about living in the boonies to find a nice group practice to latch onto.

2.) Why do the inpatient docs look down on those who practice outpatient medicine? I think outpatient medicine is a blast. You get to develop amazing relationships and you check problems before they begin to adversely impact the life of kids.

-finny

 

[14022]

The market is not oversaturated, especially in areas such as general academic pediatrics and underserved areas, such as urban and rural areas. But keep in mind, you can specialize and still have primarily an outpatient practice in several fields, such as developmental peds, endocrine, AI, etc.

I dont think people generally look down on general peds docs. My experience is that most generally have a lot of respect for outpatient docs. Personally, I would never be an outpt general pediatrician since it was way too hard. Inpatient medicine is pretty easy since most kids are admitted with a known diagnosis and you manage it appropriately. Outpt docs have to see 1000 kids with the same nonspecific symptoms and try to pick the 2 or 3 out of those 1000 that actually have something wrong with them. This is incredibly challenging and I think most people in pediatric medicine (even the pediatric surgeons at my hospital) realize this.

 

[doctorlauren]

Hey finnpippette!😀 I too, have just finished my peds rotation and am almost convinced that this is where my interest lies. 😀 To be specific, I am fascinated with the division of Adolescent Medicine: I just finished my first elective placement in Adol Med, and have never felt this way about a specialty. (Conversely, I have no interest in "wasting" my time in other electives and feel as if I'm setting myself up for disappointment doing anything else, because nothing is going to be as good as this was. Which is a bad attitude, I know, I know.) Isn't it amazing to have that intuitive feeling that *this* is what you're meant to do? And I think - finally! :lol I was envious of all my peers when they seemed to be finding their niches in surgery or internal med.

Outpt docs have to see 1000 kids with the same nonspecific symptoms and try to pick the 2 or 3 out of those 1000 that actually have something wrong with them. This is incredibly challenging and I think most people in pediatric medicine (even the pediatric surgeons at my hospital) realize this.

This is so true, excellent point. However, I would say that the majority of pediatricians that I have had exposure to do both inpatient and outpatient work, especially in the subspecialties: ex) the pediatric orthopedic surgeon will treat patients in clinic, then operate on an inpatient, etc.