pediatrics

Pediatric polysomnography patient
Children's Hospital (Saint Louis), 2006

Pediatrics (or paediatrics) is a branch of medical care that deals with the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents. The upper age limit ranges from age 14 to 18, depending on the country.

A medical practitioner who specializes in this area is known as a pediatrician (also spelled paediatrician).

The word pediatrics and its cognates mean healer of children; they derive from two Greek words: παῖς (pais = child) and ἰατρός (iatros = doctor or healer).

Differences between adult and pediatric medicine

Pediatrics differs from adult medicine in many respects. The obvious body size differences are paralleled by maturational changes. The smaller body of an infant or neonate is substantially different physiologically from that of an adult. Congenital defects, genetic variance, and developmental issues are of greater concern to pediatricians than they often are to adult physicians.

Treating a child is not like treating a miniature adult. A major difference between pediatrics and adult medicine is that children are minors and, in most jurisdictions, cannot make decisions for themselves. The issues of guardianship, privacy, legal responsibility and informed consent must always be considered in every pediatric procedure. In a sense, pediatricians often have to treat the parents and sometimes, the family, rather than just the child. Adolescents are in their own legal class, having rights to their own health care decisions in certain circumstances only.

Training of pediatricians

The training of pediatricians varies considerably across the world.

Like other medical practitioners, pediatricians begin their training with an entry-level medical education: a tertiary-level course, undertaken at a medical school attached to a university. Such a course leads to a medical degree.

Depending on jurisdiction and university, a medical degree course may be either undergraduate-entry or graduate-entry. The former commonly takes five or six years, and has been usual in the Commonwealth. Entrants to graduate-entry courses (as in the USA), usually lasting four or five years, have previously completed a three- or four-year university degree, commonly but by no means always in sciences. Medical graduates hold a degree specific to the country and university in and from which they graduated. This degree qualifies that medical practitioner to become licensed or registered under the laws of that particular country, and sometimes of several countries, subject to requirements for "internship" or "conditional registration".

Within the United States, the term physician also describes holders of the Doctor of Osteopathic medicine (D.O.) degree. For further information on osteopathic medicine, see the entry on the comparison of MD and DO in the US.

Pediatricians must undertake further training in their chosen field. This may take from three to six or more years, depending on jurisdiction and the degree of specialization. The post-graduate training for a primary care physician, including primary care pediatricians, is generally not as lengthy as for a hospital-based medical specialist.

In most jurisdictions, entry-level degrees are common to all branches of the medical profession, but in some jurisdictions, specialization in pediatrics may begin before completion of this degree. In some jurisdictions, pediatric training is begun immediately following completion of entry-level training. In other jurisdictions, junior medical doctors must undertake generalist (unstreamed) training for a number of years before commencing pediatric (or any other) specialization. Specialist training is often largely under the control of pediatric organizations (see below) rather than universities, with varying degrees of government input, depending on jurisdiction.

Pediatric organizations

Most pediatricians are members of a national body. Examples are the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Canadian Paediatric Society, the Royal College Of Paediatrics and Child Health, Norsk barnelegeforening (The Norwegian society of pediatricians) or the Indian Academy of Pediatrics. In Australia and New Zealand, paediatricians are fellows of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which covers both nations and which has adult & paediatric sections. This was the situation in the UK until the late 1990s, where specialist pediatricians were Members Fellows of either the Royal College of Physicians or of the fraternal colleges in Scotland. In 1996, British paediatricians were granted a royal charter to form their own college, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

Social role of pediatric specialists

Like other medical practitioners, pediatricians are traditionally considered to be members of a learned profession, because of the extensive training requirements, and also because of the occupation's special ethical and legal duties.

Pediatricians commonly enjoy high social status, often combined with expectations of a high and stable income and job security. However, medical practitioners in general often work long and inflexible hours, with shifts at unsociable times, and may earn less than other professionals whose education is of comparable length. Neonatologists or general pediatricians in hospital practice are often on call at unsociable times for perinatal problems in particular — such as for Cesarean section or other high risk births, and for the care of ill newborn infants.

In August 2000, during a "name and shame" campaign by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World, a paediatrician in Wales had her home and car vandalised by "vigilantes", who believed "paediatrician" meant "paedophile".^[1]

See also

• Children's hospital
• Medical specialty
• Pediatric ophthalmology
• Pediatric endocrinology
• Child life specialist

References

Further reading

• Contemporary Pediatrics - a monthly magazine
• Clinical Pediatrics - a peer-reviewed journal
• Pediatric Image Quiz - a collection of interesting images in pediatrics

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pediatrics

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Pediatrics

Look up Pediatrics in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• American Academy of Pediatrics
• Baby Constipation? See our Help Baby Poo FAQ
• Canadian Pediatric Society
• Pediatric Collection by the BMJ - Collection of Pediatric papers published in the British Medical Journal.
• Carrollton Pediatrics Health News
• Dynamic Differential Diagnosis
• Paediatrics.info
• SearchingPediatrics.com - Searching pediatric peer-reviewed information
• GeneralPediatrics.com - The general pediatrician's view of the Internet
• "Pediatrician Online" - Online pediatricians answer queries related to child health, and run a parent friendly service