Pediatrics? Help?

[littlesooyon92]

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Can someone explain to me in detail, what it is like to be in college studying pediatrics?

Like what major did you take in under grad studies? Med school?

How is the residency like?

I just started thinking bout pediatrics, and I read a forum about neonatal ?

I am more interested in infants rather than older children, do general pediatricians have to treat ages 0-18? How can I choose a field with only infants?

And what are some good med schools in CA?

 

[McGillGrad]

1. Study anything you like in college as long as you get a 3.7-4.0

2. In med school, you learn as much as possible about everything because being a good pediatrician means you need to know all of medicine because you will spend residency seeing babies and 17-18 year old adults.

3. Residency cannot be described, it has to be experienced. In a nutshell, you are spending 12-14 hours a day for 6 days a week talking to parents, examining patients, doing hours of paperwork/dictation and consulting with other professionals.

4. No matter what your interests are, you are required to become a qualified pediatrician (which means treating 0-18 year olds for 3 years) before you can do a fellowship in neonates.

Any school that accepts you in california is a good school.

 

[silverlining1]

Hey there, just wanted to clarify if you're in the US-

College is completely separate from medical school and residency; pediatrics is a residency and not something that is studied in college or medical school (strictly speaking).

In college, major in whatever you want! You'll have to meet certain course requirements to apply to medical school, but you will have some flexibility. People major in English, biology, anthropology... anything! Just study hard and do well.

In medical school, everyone has to get experience working in each of the main fields (e.g. internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery, neurology, etc.). You are not studying to be a pediatrician in medical school; you're studying to become qualified as a doctor (MD, DO).

After medical school, you'll do the residency of your choosing; this is where you would get your specialized pediatrics training!

It's great to have some interests now, but as McGillGrad said, it's a long road before you can even consider neonatology or another subspecialaty. If you like, you can check with local hospitals and perhaps get involved with volunteering or research in that field.

 

[Sweet Tea]

Agreeing with the others:

1) You don't study pediatrics in college. You major in whatever you want, and then also take the medical school pre-reqs. Some majors (the science ones), cover the pre-reqs. In addition to the pre-reqs, take some classes just because you genuinely find them interesting. I majored in biology with a minor in music performance.

2) In med school, you take med school classes. The first 3 years of medical school are largely picked for you; there aren't any "majors". Fourth year you get to pick your rotations, and you pretty much pick them based on the field you want to go into.

3) Residency now is largely 12-16 hour shifts, 6 days a week. It's intense. Your patients as a pediatrician range from just born 24-week premature babies to 12-21 year olds in a congenital heart clinic. In residency you rotate through the general pediatrics clinic, pediatric wards (covering a variety of subspecialties), NICU, PICU, and in many residencies residents staff deliveries. You also rotate through the ED and subspecialty clinics.

4) After residency, you can pursue a fellowship like neonatology where you can largely pick the type of patients you want to see. Neonatology covers newborns of all types...from the normal 39 week vaginal delivery to the 25-week gestational age baby that really should be back in utero. Personally I never want to take care of a neonate again and will be pursuing an ED fellowship.

5) Any medical school in any state that you can get in to will give you sufficient training. What you do with it is up to you.

Hope that helps!