Tough time deciding residency choice (Child Neuro vs Peds)

[AardvarksRUs]

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[babybrains]

I'm a CN resident who's about to start my fellowship years, so I'm no expert, but my thoughts:

- there are definitely peds sports medicine clinics; my hospital has them
- I definitely don't think we're the most intense specialty - we're one of the busiest on the inpatient side with consults, but intense goes to peds surgical subs/PICU/NICU
- Kids not getting better definitely depends on what you do in the field. Bread and butter for outpatient (from what I've heard) is a lot of headaches and tics, which are pretty benign overall and (in the case of the latter) often result in reassurance.
- we could probably stand to shave a year off of the peds prelim portion - 2 years has felt like an excessive amount, especially as the vast majority of us don't board in peds anyway. But yeah, it's 5 years, plus 1-2 if you are interested in fellowship afterward.
- I'm personally not aware of any particular pay cuts, though peds in general is paid pretty poorly compared to adult medicine. I know ID is a pay hit, but I'm not sure about other subspecialties.

Child neuro seems to be divided into two camps: those who are pediatricians who happen to specialize in neurology, and those who are neurologists who happen to work with kids. I'm the latter (I was deciding between neuro and child neuro, so a different decision), so I focused on programs that were more integrated/focused on the neurology side; you may want to look into peds-based programs since it sounds like you're in the former group.

I also know of at least 1 resident in my CN program who dropped out of the neuro portion and finished out a third year of peds. I also know of people who did a peds residency and then applied into an advanced CN spot. So making the decision now doesn't mean you couldn't change your mind later if you had to (though it would cost you a year in the latter case). Both fields are pretty easy to match into, though CN is arguably a little harder to get ideal location just due to small program sizes and lower number of programs.

I will say that outpatient clinic was the one thing I actually enjoyed during my peds years, and in general I love outpatient clinic and having continuity with families as well, which is something that I saw in the child neuro realm and drew me to it. I've always been attracted to the diagnostic puzzle neurology presents, and I found that I liked working with kids and adults, so that's why child neuro was the right fit for me. I also found that I got along best with neurologists over any other specialty, so it passed that check, too.

 

[AardvarksRUs]

I'm a CN resident who's about to start my fellowship years, so I'm no expert, but my thoughts:

- there are definitely peds sports medicine clinics; my hospital has them
- I definitely don't think we're the most intense specialty - we're one of the busiest on the inpatient side with consults, but intense goes to peds surgical subs/PICU/NICU
- Kids not getting better definitely depends on what you do in the field. Bread and butter for outpatient (from what I've heard) is a lot of headaches and tics, which are pretty benign overall and (in the case of the latter) often result in reassurance.
- we could probably stand to shave a year off of the peds prelim portion - 2 years has felt like an excessive amount, especially as the vast majority of us don't board in peds anyway. But yeah, it's 5 years, plus 1-2 if you are interested in fellowship afterward.
- I'm personally not aware of any particular pay cuts, though peds in general is paid pretty poorly compared to adult medicine. I know ID is a pay hit, but I'm not sure about other subspecialties.

Child neuro seems to be divided into two camps: those who are pediatricians who happen to specialize in neurology, and those who are neurologists who happen to work with kids. I'm the latter (I was deciding between neuro and child neuro, so a different decision), so I focused on programs that were more integrated/focused on the neurology side; you may want to look into peds-based programs since it sounds like you're in the former group.

I also know of at least 1 resident in my CN program who dropped out of the neuro portion and finished out a third year of peds. I also know of people who did a peds residency and then applied into an advanced CN spot. So making the decision now doesn't mean you couldn't change your mind later if you had to (though it would cost you a year in the latter case). Both fields are pretty easy to match into, though CN is arguably a little harder to get ideal location just due to small program sizes and lower number of programs.

I will say that outpatient clinic was the one thing I actually enjoyed during my peds years, and in general I love outpatient clinic and having continuity with families as well, which is something that I saw in the child neuro realm and drew me to it. I've always been attracted to the diagnostic puzzle neurology presents, and I found that I liked working with kids and adults, so that's why child neuro was the right fit for me. I also found that I got along best with neurologists over any other specialty, so it passed that check, too.

This is so helpful, thanks!!