Love Neonatal, Hate Peds

[carve em up]

I really love the patients, procedures, and research opportunities offered by Neonatology, and would love to pursue such a career. However, I'm uninspired at the thought of going through a peds residency to get there. Any thoughts or advice are appreciated!!

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[jdog]

Not much of a choice. You are not alone in your feelings. Many people in all the specialties do not enjoy the primary aspects of their field.
For example, my friend in OB said he would never do general OB, he wants to do Perinatology. Friend in optho said he does not like gen optho and will only do fellowhip. how many people i IM hate gen IM and want to go into card or gi or other fellowhip.
If you want to go into nicu than the only way is by gen peds. not being a good general pediatrician will make it tough to do any pediatric subspecialty

 

[FunnyLookingKid]

I really love the patients, procedures, and research opportunities offered by Neonatology, and would love to pursue such a career. However, I'm uninspired at the thought of going through a peds residency to get there. Any thoughts or advice are appreciated!!

suck it up and do it. there's no way around it.

Like you, I never wanted to do peeds, just neonatal.

Still, peds residency wasn't so bad. I actually really got to love my patients in my resident clinic, and when I left for fellowship, and was seeing kids that were 3 years old, that I started caring for when they were in the newborn nursery, and I had to say Good-bye to them, it was very sad.
What really struck me was the fact that the kid's mothers were also upset, since their kid's doctor was leaving. That was hard.

That's the one thing I miss about it, which is building a relationship with your patient and watching them grow.
Now I have a patient at most maybe 150 days, and they come in and leave. I run into families at the mall. I can't remember their names, but I can tell you what bed space their baby was in, or how his chest x-ray looked like. Weird details like that

 

[oldbearprofessor]

Greetings:

The previous posters have let you in on the fact that there isn't any current route into neonatology that doesn't include a pediatric residency. However, you DO have at least some input into the nature of the pediatric residency you do. Some are at major medical centers with large NICU's and others are more general pediatric-oriented and may be at places with smaller NICU's. It is not always the case that the largest hospital or largest NICU is the best place to go. For example, many smaller programs may not have neonatal fellows and you'll have more direct interaction with the staff. Also, some community programs have more normal newborn clinical experiences which are fun and helpful.

I concur that pedi residency is worthwhile even for future specialists. Even though I knew I was going into neo before starting residency, with the possible exception of adolescent medicine, I enjoyed my pedi residency and have made great use of much of what was learned then!

Regards

Oldbearprofessor

 

[J-Rad]

OP: I can't tell what level of education you're at (undergrad, med school, etc), but if you're still early in the process, you could consider neonatal nurse practitioner.

 

[carve em up]

That would be an option, however, I don't think the 2 years of medical school debt under my belt would allow me to go that route.