Housejob Chronicles ||Overcoming pediatrics

Welcome back to my space! 😀

If you have read my about page, you’d know that I am currently carrying out the mandatory 1-year medical internship program and I wrote about how I got my internship placement in a ‘foreign land’ here. Although this post is several months late (pediatrics was the first of 4 postings in the program), I think it’s only right for me to still make a post about my experience.

When I was younger, I used to tell anyone who cared to listen that I wanted to become a pediatrician in future. To everyone who I might have said that to, I apologize, I definitely didn’t know what I was saying back then.

Pediatrics is the aspect of medicine that deals with the care of children, from age 0 all through 16/18 years of age (depending on the center). It also involves care of the unborn fetus as well as the new-born (>28 days).

In medical school, pediatrics wasn’t my favorite posting and so when I was given the opportunity to pick a posting to start with, I immediately picked pediatrics because I just wanted to be done with it.

The experience was a fair one, it wasn’t as grueling as I had imagined and for that I was truly grateful. There were definitely moments of joy, like when a neonate thrives, or a young child starts running around the ward after being bedridden for a long time.

One of the lessons I learnt from neonates – every second counts!

With children, you have to be extra calculating and specific – fluids and drugs have to be weight specific. Also, obtaining blood samples (for blood tests) can take several minutes to hours because accessing the veins (especially in neonates) can be really tedious. Once you get the hang of it though it becomes smoother, but there are just some times when it can still be tough.

Coming to the end of this posting, I reaffirmed my earlier conviction – no pediatrics. Some may say the joy of seeing patients get well outweighs the pain that comes with watching some deteriorate. But it still doesn’t appeal to me. I know there’s hardly any aspect of medicine that doesn’t come with the hurt of losing patients but I think it still doesn’t compare with pediatrics.

I didn’t get to take a lot of pictures so I decided to share some of my tweets from the period. Follow me on twitter!

Generally, pediatrics isn’t so bad actually. Asides the fact that you sometimes can’t get the young-lings to verbalize what exactly the problem is, it’s also difficult just seeing a sick child. It’s just so difficult seeing a sick child, pediatricians really do have a tough job. And they’re acing it. Bip ups to all the pediatricians (aspiring and practicing) out there!

I will be sharing experiences of the other 3 postings as well (without the 3 months lag😃) so subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss out on any of it!

If you’re a doctor doing your medical internship placement or already done, kindly share your experiences in the comment section below. I’d like to hear from you!