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Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Pediatric Emergency Medicine

Wow, here I am at the end of another rotation and I have even written one post about it yet. I have a few more shifts so I better get crackin'.

I am on Peds/EM rotation which is doing shifts at 2 different Emergency Departments that have dedicated Pediatric Emergency Centers. Across America in most hospitals the emergency department sees all patients whether adult, child or infant. EM physicians are trained to see all of these patients. I would say that on any given ED shift I see 20 - 40% of all the patients I see are pediatric. So far this year I have seen lots of kids on my various rotations.

However everyone gets a little tense whenever we have a really sick child that presents. I feel like we can always use more pediatric training. My residency gives us several dedicated pediatric emergency rotations. This month I have been doing shifts at 2 different pediatric emergency departments. I show up for my shift and only see sick kids the entire shift. It has been great for my training and learning to solely focus on pediatric emergencies and illnesses.

I have seen a lot of sick kids and some not so sick kids that had very worried parents. In pediatric populations you almost have 3 patients per room, the child and the parents. Often you have grandparents as well.

There is a fellowship offered after completing a residency in EM that allows you to further specialize in just pediatrics. It is 2 years. Not a lot of doctors choose to do this fellowship because most ED's do not have a separate emergency department just for kids.

This rotation has been a great learning experience so far. I will post some of the cases.

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