subspec. of peds....

[shehak20000]

Hi, I am currently doing my undergrad and have always wanted to be a pediatrician. I was just looking around for some basic info.

What type of pediatric subspecialities deal mostly with inpatient pedatrics that allow a doctor to form a long term relationship with their patients? I was thinking that pediatric hem/oncologists had that but after reading a few books it seems like that field is very much research based? Is that true?

What subspecialities deal with inpatient peds, minimal research, lots of patient contact, and allows you to form a long term relationship with your patients (aka not like Emergency medecine where you usually dont see your patient again). Thanks!

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[14022]

Hi, I am currently doing my undergrad and have always wanted to be a pediatrician. I was just looking around for some basic info.

What type of pediatric subspecialities deal mostly with inpatient pedatrics that allow a doctor to form a long term relationship with their patients? I was thinking that pediatric hem/oncologists had that but after reading a few books it seems like that field is very much research based? Is that true?

What subspecialities deal with inpatient peds, minimal research, lots of patient contact, and allows you to form a long term relationship with your patients (aka not like Emergency medecine where you usually dont see your patient again). Thanks!

You can do as much or as little research in any specialty. Especially in smaller hospitals, clinical medicine is the priority with research being done by only a small number of physicians.

That being said, the main specialties meeting your criteria are...

Cardiology
Hematology-Oncology
Nephrology
Pulmonology
Gastroenterology

However, keep in mind that all of these have a significant amount of clinic time as well (several days a week). Even in heme-onc, the majority of kids get chemo in the day hospital clinic and are not admitted to the hospital. Remember that kids (even really sick kids) spend the vast majority of their life outside of a hospital. The only specialties that spend the vast majority of time in the hospital (eg, general hospitalist, NICU, PICU, ER) are only seeing kids when they are the sickest and not following up when they leave the hospital. So if you want to have a long-term relationship with your patients, you have to see them when they are outside of the hospital in the clinic.

 

[jvinocur]

I definitely agree with the above. Most subspecialties you can have longterm patients with chronic diseases (that you see mainly in the clinic). And there are quite a few subspecialties where there will always be some of your chronic patients admitted as inpatients.

But if you're truly looking for -most- of your time to be inpatient care for patients you know well, that's really tricky.

I do have one idea, though. I'm not sure, but if you stuck to the heme/onc plan and then did bone marrow transplant specifically, you might find it meets that description. The BMT patients certainly spend a trememdous amount of time in the hospital.

Anybody more familiar with the life of a BMT attending want to comment?

 

[allendo]

You can do as much or as little research in any specialty. Especially in smaller hospitals, clinical medicine is the priority with research being done by only a small number of physicians.

That being said, the main specialties meeting your criteria are...

Cardiology
Hematology-Oncology
Nephrology
Pulmonology
Gastroenterology

However, keep in mind that all of these have a significant amount of clinic time as well (several days a week). Even in heme-onc, the majority of kids get chemo in the day hospital clinic and are not admitted to the hospital. Remember that kids (even really sick kids) spend the vast majority of their life outside of a hospital. The only specialties that spend the vast majority of time in the hospital (eg, general hospitalist, NICU, PICU, ER) are only seeing kids when they are the sickest and not following up when they leave the hospital. So if you want to have a long-term relationship with your patients, you have to see them when they are outside of the hospital in the clinic.

How hard is it to land a peds hem/onc fellowship? What about jobs afterward?