I just finished week two of my pediatric rotation, and I already know that it's not for me. As much as I enjoy interacting with children, there's just aspects of the profession that I don't think I could do for the rest of my life. Take, for instance, one of my first encounters with a kid (I was shadowing the pediatrician that day because I was still new to the rotation):
Kid: crying away because she's sick
Pediatrician: Sorry, but I need to have a look kiddo (or something along the lines of this)
So the next thing that happens is that he literally pins the kid onto the examining table using his body weight, has the mother take the arms and stabilize the head, and then proceeds to look into the kid's ears and mouth.
Thankfully, that doesn't happen very often, but when the kids are really sick and have to be examined, the pediatricians have to do what has to be done. Kudos for them for being able to do that, but that's not for me.
My only arsenal for calming the kids when they don't want to get examined is to pretend I'm looking for their lunch/breakfast with my stethoscope. I feel like such a dork doing it, but it's been fairly effective so far in that I've successfully done what needs to be done for the physical exam.
One moment I'm rather embarrassed about was when I was dealing with a girl and her guardian. Things were going well until I asked the guardian how long he had adopted the girl. At that moment, there was a pause, and he tells me that she in fact doesn't know she's adopted! I had unfortunately assumed that because he was freely talking about being her guardian, she knew she had been adopted. But I guess that topic had never been broached, and here she was (because yes, she was in the room and fully understood everything we were talking about), learning from ME, a stranger, that this man, who had occasionally taken her to visit her mom was in fact her legal guardian. I was a little mortified at what I had done, but at least he was reasonable about it, saying that she had to find out eventually, and that was as good a time as any.
On a related note, I find it unbelievable how poorly some of these children are treated. The above-mentioned girl was removed from her mom's care because apparently her uncle (her guardian) discovered that she was eating her own feces because of neglect and malnutrition. Another baby that I saw on the neonatal ward was being apprehended by social services because his mom (a cocaine addict) went in labour prematurely in a washroom and ended up abandoning him. I find it incredulous to believe these things can happen, and I wish there were better resources available for the affected children.
Anyways, some other random experiences that stick out in my mind include the newborn in whom I diagnosed a displaced hip (I guess I'm not completely useless after all!), and another girl who overstimulated herself in the doctor's room by playing with her cousin and ended up peeing on one of the seats. The latter experience was just one more reminder to me that as much fun as kids are, that's really not something I want to deal with day in and day out when I'm graduated and practicing as a doctor.
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