Pediatric Patients

[EMmedic]

For the attendings and residents out there -

Approximately what percentage of your patients are pediatric? I'm very interested in EM and I also like the idea of treating children. I've read up on the pediatric EM fellowships but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me (3 years additional training only to make less money in the end). Do you still see a good amount of peds in normal practice? Are these cases mostly diverted away to pediatric specialty hospitals or subsets of your ED only staffed by pediatric EM docs?

Thanks!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[GeneralVeers]

For the attendings and residents out there -

Approximately what percentage of your patients are pediatric? I'm very interested in EM and I also like the idea of treating children. I've read up on the pediatric EM fellowships but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me (3 years additional training only to make less money in the end). Do you still see a good amount of peds in normal practice? Are these cases mostly diverted away to pediatric specialty hospitals or subsets of your ED only staffed by pediatric EM docs?

Thanks!

IMO Peds fellowship isn't useful unless you want to work at pediatric ER.

We have 3 hospitals I work at. One has a peds ER with dedicated Peds EM physician so I see 0% peds there. At the other two places it is usually about 20-30%. Any kid who appears sick, or I'm not sure what's going on, I transfer to the peds hospital.

 

[DeLaughterDO]

Not to nitpick, Peds EM fellowship is 2 years after an EM residency.

At our place, we see about 20% peds, all comers. Would see more, but we have a walk in clinic open til 9pm daily, so we lose a lot to that.

 

[Jeff698]

We're about 15-20% at my community hospital next to a rather large retirement meca (Sun City, TX).

We haven't, up to now, admitted children. We've been open about 1 1/2 years and have been working on building our pediatric hospitalist program and nursing staff.

Take care,
Jeff

 

[dchristismi]

We're also about 15-20%, and I practice in Winter Haven, Fl - and I have lots of elderly patients as well. We admit some children, but the majority are transferred to a larger hospital nearby. There are 2 or 3 pediatric hospitals within about 2 hours, but only the intubated ones go there.

And FWIW, even at my elderly mecca, I have intubated 3 children in the past 6 months. And we do see a lot of the "my baby has a fever" - especially in the winter.