question about letters of recommendation & then a little peds OT

[Ginkoba4]

Hi I'm a 4th year student applying for peds. I tried searching for an answer to this, but couldn't come up w/ anything on SDN & I'm a little embarrassed to ask somebody from my hospital right now...can a letter of recommendation come from a resident (a senior resident, obviously, not an intern)? I know it's application time & I still have no letters in & I feel I work more with the residents anyway...

My pet peeve is now that I've decided to do peds & tell other doctors so, all I get is, "Good for you, I hate kids." "It's so boring, they only use like 20 drugs." "Soon a NP will take over all of out patient peds." etc. etc. It's making me a little anxious, like I'm limiting myself to patients under 18 now & forever. I have nothing against adult patients, it's just that I never feel like I'm fixing a problem for them, it's just manage, manage, manage, and it depresses me. Argh, everytime I hear these comments, it just puts doubts in my mind. Alright, enough ranting, I'm sure this has been discussed many times over here.

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[TexasRose]

Hi I'm a 4th year student applying for peds. I tried searching for an answer to this, but couldn't come up w/ anything on SDN & I'm a little embarrassed to ask somebody from my hospital right now...can a letter of recommendation come from a resident (a senior resident, obviously, not an intern)? I know it's application time & I still have no letters in & I feel I work more with the residents anyway...

My pet peeve is now that I've decided to do peds & tell other doctors so, all I get is, "Good for you, I hate kids." "It's so boring, they only use like 20 drugs." "Soon a NP will take over all of out patient peds." etc. etc. It's making me a little anxious, like I'm limiting myself to patients under 18 now & forever. I have nothing against adult patients, it's just that I never feel like I'm fixing a problem for them, it's just manage, manage, manage, and it depresses me. Argh, everytime I hear these comments, it just puts doubts in my mind. Alright, enough ranting, I'm sure this has been discussed many times over here.

My understanding is that you really need LOR's from attending physicians. I don't think resident letters will carry much weight at all. You might want to check with a couple of the programs that you are applying to and see if they specify where the letters need to come from. (some may require a departmental letter, etc)

Don't listen to adult docs talk about peds. There's a reason they choose to do adult medicine and it's probably because they don't like peds! No matter what specialty you choose, there are always naysayers. C'est la vie.

 

[DoctorWannaBe]

I wouldn't get a letter from a resident. Every program I've looked at say it has to be from clinical faculty members. Maybe you could have the resident write the letter and have the attending cosign it? Or maybe the resident could give an attending feedback about you so the attending can write his own letter.

 

[fancypants]

It's making me a little anxious, like I'm limiting myself to patients under 18 now & forever.

If you go into IM you'll be limiting yourself to patients 18 and over.

Just like Texas Rose said, everybody thinks his or her specialty is the best and can't imagine why anybody would want to consider anything else. Peds isn't glamorous, high paying (comparatively), or prestigious. A lot of people don't consider it to be too "hard" and there probably aren't that many action-star moments where you jump on top of a gurney, doing chest compressions while yelling "OMG I'm such a fcuking rockstar! Nurse, hand me the blowtorch, I'm going in!!1!1" And yet, somehow pediatricians manage to rank pretty high in career satisfaction. Not too shabby.

 

[TexasRose]

there probably aren’t that many action-star moments where you jump on top of a gurney, doing chest compressions while yelling “OMG I’m such a fcuking rockstar! Nurse, hand me the blowtorch, I’m going in!!1!1”

Brilliant!

 

[Marigold]

TR, you and I must be on the same wavelength, because after reading fancypants's post, I was about to write something along the lines of "brilliant" regarding that sentence!

Hehe, fancypants, you make me laugh.