What makes Peds great

[texdrake]

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I have an issue. I am a fourth year student in the miltary and need to decide in the next couple months what I am going to do with the rest of my life. I have limited my choices to Family Practice and Pediatrics. Problem is I can't decide. Anyone want to tell me what make Pediatrics and a Pediatic residency the better of the two decisions?

Thanks in advance...

 

[USeF]

Peds is sorta subspecializing from family med 🙂
Honestly, I wanted to be a primary care doc- be someone's doctor rather than just A doctor (the case in anesthesia, emergency medicine and other fields that were attractive to me for various reasons) yet I wanted to be able to have a grasp of a good depth of knowledge without losing any particular 'organ system'
Family med is quite tempting and I have lots of respect for my colleagues in that field. There are just too many pieces of knowledge that are constantly being added to the repertoire of medicine to know everything needed to be a great FP. So then it was adult or pediatric medicine. The other interests I have made it easy to decide. namely, Preventive medicine and health policy.

Immunizations, annual physicals etc give opportunities to educate and prevent disease. Health promotion is a the name of the game and that just appeals to more than simply treating disease. Finally, which has more political pull, save a baby or save an old guy? Pediatric Obesity is a huuge problem (pun intended) and I hope to work with some of those future leaders in the field.

can anyone tell I'm in personaly statement mode 😉

 

[jamie]

I have an issue. I am a fourth year student in the miltary and need to decide in the next couple months what I am going to do with the rest of my life. I have limited my choices to Family Practice and Pediatrics. Problem is I can't decide. Anyone want to tell me what make Pediatrics and a Pediatic residency the better of the two decisions?

Thanks in advance...

Would you miss taking care of adults? Having conversations with your parents (as opposed to their parents), offering well-woman care, caring for illness like HTN, DM, high cholesterol, COPD, etc? I don't miss any of that at all (the thought of it makes me cringe), so peds was a natural choice for me. I love taking care of kids -- even the crazy parents don't bother me that much (so far). I enjoy most of childhood illnesses, child development, the range from neonates to adolescents, mostly healthy patient population, etc, etc. Plus, I appreciate my training includes low acuity (outpatient) and higher acuity (PICU, NICU), which is good since i haven't yet decided what i want to do after i finish training. In FP, you're destined for outpatient work.

 

[earmuffs]

is like being a Vet.

None of your patients can talk, and all their owners are crazy.

 

[texdrake]

Peds is sorta subspecializing from family med 🙂
Honestly, I wanted to be a primary care doc- be someone's doctor rather than just A doctor (the case in anesthesia, emergency medicine and other fields that were attractive to me for various reasons) yet I wanted to be able to have a grasp of a good depth of knowledge without losing any particular 'organ system'
Family med is quite tempting and I have lots of respect for my colleagues in that field. There are just too many pieces of knowledge that are constantly being added to the repertoire of medicine to know everything needed to be a great FP. So then it was adult or pediatric medicine. The other interests I have made it easy to decide. namely, Preventive medicine and health policy.

Immunizations, annual physicals etc give opportunities to educate and prevent disease. Health promotion is a the name of the game and that just appeals to more than simply treating disease. Finally, which has more political pull, save a baby or save an old guy? Pediatric Obesity is a huuge problem (pun intended) and I hope to work with some of those future leaders in the field.

can anyone tell I'm in personaly statement mode 😉

That was an excellent response. Thank you. I am still deciding but I am leaning one way and I find your views similar to mine.

 

[texdrake]

Would you miss taking care of adults? Having conversations with your parents (as opposed to their parents), offering well-woman care, caring for illness like HTN, DM, high cholesterol, COPD, etc? I don't miss any of that at all (the thought of it makes me cringe), so peds was a natural choice for me. I love taking care of kids -- even the crazy parents don't bother me that much (so far). I enjoy most of childhood illnesses, child development, the range from neonates to adolescents, mostly healthy patient population, etc, etc. Plus, I appreciate my training includes low acuity (outpatient) and higher acuity (PICU, NICU), which is good since i haven't yet decided what i want to do after i finish training. In FP, you're destined for outpatient work.

I would miss well woman care. The rest I don't think I would miss that much. Although, since I have high cholesterol I have learned a wealth of knowledge on the subject....shame to waste it.

The other thing I would miss is psych. Don't get much in general peds and it is fun to dabble in.

 

[AF_PedsBoy]

I went into Peds because I like poking kids.

Also you do still see a huge variety - in my two months of being a mighty intern I took care of kids from right out o' the womb to 21 years old. Also plenty of psych if you don't mind a huge part of it being ADHD and depression. For some reason my clinic LOVED to schedule all my ADHD appointments at the END of the day when I'm getting tired and THEIR meds are wearing off... I hear you get plenty of gyn in the adolescent clinic - I only got one "itchy bumps on vagina" while I was in clinic...

Did I mention I like poking kids? That was a big selling point for me... plus I can have stuffed animals in my office.