How many days a week do pediatricians generally work? Depends if they are part time or full time, but a lot of the FT peds I know work 4-5 days a week seeing patients and may have 1/2 to 1 whole day of "admin" time. Do they work weekends? There might be some practices that don't, but prbably most will share call in a practice group for weeknights and rotating weekends. How often will depend on how many are in the practice. Even if they're on call, is it pretty rare to get called in, relative to other specialties? Again, depends totally on the practice, but in a lot of places, it's not uncommon to have to come in. They may have to attend C-sections in the middle of the night, come to the ED for an ill patient, stabilize an ill baby/child prior to transport (esp. if they're working outside a tertiary care center). Call ins are going to be more than some fields and less than others. There are very few derm call-ins, and we may get called in more than IM since a lot of ED docs are much less comfortable with kids in the ED than adults, esp in community hospitals.
What do pediatricians typically see patients for? Umm, kid stuff? Well baby and well child exams are deriguer. Frequent acute illnesses seen are repiratory infections, otitis media, gastroeneteritis +/- dehydration, rashes, and musculoskeletal pain. More commonly seen, potentially severe illness might be DKA, asthma exacerbation, (depending on location) sickle cell pain/fever crises, anemia (which may represent something as "benign" as milk overconsumption or as bad as leukemia). There are plenty of "zebras" as well, and the art of peds (and IM and FM) is to know when to think about the zebras as well. Or is each day completely unpredictable? Most days in the clinic are probably predictable, but it's not uncommon to get the sick kid with a bad presentation of a common or uncommon disease so you always have to be prepared (this goes for IM and FM as well). Does the job ever get repetitive? I'd challenge you to find a field in medicine that doesn't get repetetive. I don't think one exists. Every primary and specialty field has its stock-in-trade and commonly seen disease processes. I find well baby/child exams repetetive and boring, but others love the opportunity to catch that kid with early sign of autism or something else. Perception (or toleration) of repetetiveness is going to be partially personality based.
What is the biggest stressor? What makes for a bad day? See my below comment.
And personally, what do you like most and least about being a pediatrician?
Again, see my below comment. For me, personally, l like the patients most of the time and I've picked a subspecialty in which I really like the disease processes. Non-compliant parents or parents with a sense of entitlement are some of my biggest bugaboos.
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Thanks!
Or maybe I did something wrong? Hm..
