How did you know?

[ciestar]

I love kids and I don’t deny this. However, I am unsure if I want to do peds. Problem? My peds clerkship is awful. I haven’t been able to do much other than shadowing for four weeks. Finally on inpatient so I can follow patients myself but I feel like five days of exposure isn’t enough.

So, how did you know peds was it? I loved FM, which does have a peds component, but I am just conflicted.

I do plan on doing at least one peds rotation as an MS4. My school luckily has an affiliation with a children’s hospital that I will be able to rotate at next year.

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[SurfingDoctor]

A clerkship that involves only shadowing sounds like a terribly run clerkship. I would imagine it would be hard to get an understanding of what a speciality was like if you only sat there and observed. Doing electives in pediatrics specialties (ID, GI, etc.) would likely be a helpful experience.

I knew I wanted to do pediatrics mostly because I didn’t enjoy my adult-oriented rotations as much. The voluntary lack of compliance by patients was too frustrating for me.

 

[FrkyBgStok]

I loved my peds rotation even though some of it wasn’t the best. The biggest thing for me that was different was the pathology. I think congenital heart lesions are way more interesting than hypertension. CF is way more interesting to me than smoking related emphysema. I think some of that you can get without seeing any patients.

Try to imagine your life as an attending. What would you like to be doing?

 

[BigRedBeta]

I did peds in spite of my peds clerkship. I always told students when I was a resident or fellow to focus on the actual medicine that was going on, rather than any of the extra stuff that does or doesn't happen on a rotation. Usually it's because they get to do something cool or the people are really nice, but in your case it's the opposite.

 

[MEN2C]

I knew it when I did my medicine rotation and realized that I’m not nice enough to take care of adults and still maintain my sanity or empathy.

The back breaker was when I spent six hours scrubbed into a vascular surgery and saw the guy smoking while eating a cheeseburger right outside the hospital.

99% of the time, even when parents disagree with you or give you a hard time, they’re coming from a place of wanting to do the best thing for their child. They just might be misinformed. It’s a very small minority of parents who just don’t care about their kids (even though they may not care about themselves). And for me, that makes all the difference. I think this probably accounts for a large part of why pediatricians and pediatric subpecialties always are amongst the top in lifestyle happiness spsurveys despite being relatively lower reimbursed.

 

[Oso]

I came into med school thinking IM, was absolutely NOT thinking about peds.

Then hated IM (my first rotation), and pretty much hated everything until I did peds (my last rotation of 3rd year). Explored it more with an elective and decided to do it. Didn't really have an "aha" moment, just realized that I enjoyed it more and I kind of just realized over time the more I did peds stuff that I should do it. Even now as an intern, there are days where I'm like "oh wow good thing I did peds, this was definitely the right choice".

If you're between peds and FM, I would ask yourself these things:
1. do you want to take care of adults? would you be ok never taking care of adults again?
2. do you have any interest in a sub-specialty/organ system?

I agree with your plan of further exploring peds with another rotation.

Best of luck

 

[ciestar]

Thank you for all your replies!

Today was one of those rewarding days tbh..
The mother of the patient that I have been following since last week (i did the admission) thanked me for being so wonderful with her daughter. It gives you the sense you’ve done something right.

Regarding my future plans? Well, as an attending I am leaning more toward the “lifestyle” path.. meaning outpatient stuff. I want minimal to no call and all that jazz.

But in regards to kids vs adults... idk honestly. I can get just as much time speaking to adults with their kids on peds as I can with them as patients (i do enjoy geri, though). I just have a lot of things to think about.

Regarding organ systems... i really like pulm, ENT, heme/onc, and ID. I absolutely loathe IM, though. THANKFULLY i can do a rotation in pretty much peds specialty under the sun, just not sure which one to do. (I plan on taking the first or second block of m4 off for CK/CS, which is May or June... but now I am totally unsure exactly how to coordinate rotations and need for LORs (i have one for FM right now)).