Question about stress

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Hi, I am a freshman in college and I am pre-med. I have been wanting to become an outpatient pediatrician inspired by my pediatrician growing up but I am concerned about the stress involved with the role after talking to a pediatrician and whether I can handle that stress given that I have pretty bad anxiety.

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To be honest, I’m not sure there is any job that doesn’t have the potential to cause worry or be one where you could bring your worry home. It’s more a question of will you be one to let that happen to you or not.

That’s much more about the individual than any given profession.
 
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I'd be more concerned about your ability to cope during training than the end job itself (though obviously that should be a consideration). Outpatient general pediatrics tends to be high volume with relatively low acuity (most of the day is spent on well visits, follow-up of a handful of chronic problems like asthma, maybe some depression/anxiety, ADHD, etc, and sick visits). You do have to be able to cope with uncertainty in any medical field. The demands on documentation and volume of patients is increasing, and many employers are looking to cut costs with less trained individuals (PA, NP, etc).

There are other fields within pediatrics that may be lower acuity/volume--things like genetics, peds psych (which can be accessed through psych or peds, I believe), development and behavioral peds, etc will give you more time with your patients, but are often in a Children's Hospital setting where you may have other stressors added (needing to participate in hospital committees, teaching, etc).

I'm peds endo, and I love my job. It's taken me a while to adjust from the training mentality of 'I need to do everything', and I tend to enjoy my days more, but getting through training is tough, especially if you also have some executive functioning issues (this is not extrapolating to you, just describing where people I've seen struggle).
 
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To be honest, I’m not sure there is any job that doesn’t have the potential to cause worry or be one where you could bring your worry home. It’s more a question of will you be one to let that happen to you or not.

That’s much more about the individual than any given profession.
Yes, I understand and that's very true. I have worked in retail and similar roles where I have dealt with customers/managers yelling at me but I felt that the stress of that was different as those are different kinds of stressors. I guess that I was hoping to learn more about what the specific stressors are for this job?
 
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I'd be more concerned about your ability to cope during training than the end job itself (though obviously that should be a consideration). Outpatient general pediatrics tends to be high volume with relatively low acuity (most of the day is spent on well visits, follow-up of a handful of chronic problems like asthma, maybe some depression/anxiety, ADHD, etc, and sick visits). You do have to be able to cope with uncertainty in any medical field. The demands on documentation and volume of patients is increasing, and many employers are looking to cut costs with less trained individuals (PA, NP, etc).

There are other fields within pediatrics that may be lower acuity/volume--things like genetics, peds psych (which can be accessed through psych or peds, I believe), development and behavioral peds, etc will give you more time with your patients, but are often in a Children's Hospital setting where you may have other stressors added (needing to participate in hospital committees, teaching, etc).

I'm peds endo, and I love my job. It's taken me a while to adjust from the training mentality of 'I need to do everything', and I tend to enjoy my days more, but getting through training is tough, especially if you also have some executive functioning issues (this is not extrapolating to you, just describing where people I've seen struggle).
Thanks, this was really helpful and I will think more about this.
 
Yes, I understand and that's very true. I have worked in retail and similar roles where I have dealt with customers/managers yelling at me but I felt that the stress of that was different as those are different kinds of stressors. I guess that I was hoping to learn more about what the specific stressors are for this job?
Well in regards to what the pediatrician who you talked to told you, generally speaking, you use your knowledge to provide the best and most reasonable care for a patient. And most times, it will work out. However, sometimes terrible things happen that are missed or beyond your control. This ends up being more of a personal confidence issue in one's self of just trying to the right thing, more than anything else.

Personally, I don't really perseverate on any of it. My only two mantras are 1) be concerned when something feels off and 2) learn from mistakes.
 
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