A healthcare career as a pediatrician, or child specialist, can be stimulating, challenging, and, nevertheless, very rewarding. Pediatricians are doctors who specialize in children’s diseases and critical medical conditions that affect infants, children, and adolescents. The term
Pediatric careers involve responsibilities for healthcare specialists that go beyond merely nursing sick children back to health. Pediatricians are also proponents of child health in general. They may even be involved with the social, environmental, and political spheres of children’s lives, rights, and needs.
Is Pediatrics the Right Field for You?
If you enjoy both medicine and interacting with kids, then pediatrics may interest you. If you also have a good understanding of children’s behavioral patterns and patience to analyze each tear in babies’ eyes, then a healthcare career in pediatrics may be for you. As a pediatrician, you would have to communicate constantly with children, their families, and many other people. To be successful, a pediatrician should possess vision, leadership, imagination, and, above all, determination.
A pediatrician’s job is family oriented, and as such, pediatricians must examine children within the larger contexts of their families in order to assess all of the psychosocial aspects that may have profound influences on the children’s well-beings. Specialists have opportunities to voice concerns about issues that affect children’s health. Consequently, doctors who enjoy the social aspects of healthcare often find pediatric jobs fulfilling.
What Are the Qualities of a Good Pediatrician?
Child specialists, in order to be the best at their jobs as pediatricians, have to possess certain qualities:
- good diagnosing skills
- patience, sensitivity, and empathy
- emotional toughness
- abilities to work long, strenuous hours and be constantly vigilant
- good understanding of children’s natures and families
- excellent communication and listening skills
- abilities to learn from patients
- good senses of humor
- abilities to work with multidisciplinary teams
Pediatric Subspecialties
Pediatrics is the most-diverse specialty. It is composed of two main fields: general pediatrics and pediatric subspecialties. Often, in addition to their knowledge of general pediatrics, specialists identify interests in other areas as well. They can also specialize in any of the following fields: endocrinology, gastroenterology, immunology and infectious diseases, oncology, clinical pharmacology, respiratory medicine, and rheumatology, in addition to many others.
Consulting Opportunities and the Future of Pediatrics
Most pediatricians enjoy their flexible working hours. They often take full-time hospital jobs or part-time consulting jobs. Children of all ages, from infants to teenagers, and their parents will always need doctors and specialists who are equipped with skills to care for their varying medical conditions.
