How to Have a Career in Pediatrics

Pediatrics is the branch of medicine that specializes in caring for and medical treatment of infants, children and adolescents. In the long history of medicine, pediatrics is fairly young as a medical specialty as it was developed only in the 1800s. Before then, trained physicians treated only adults, with the care for children relegated to mothers and midwives.

The training to become a pediatrician does vary throughout the world but there are considerations all prospective pediatricians must consider. Investing many years devoted to schooling as well as the money to pay for it are only the tip of the iceberg when considering becoming a pediatrician. There are three long and arduous levels of just schooling alone that one must successfully pass through: pre-med, medical school and residency.

According to Dr. Vincent Iannelli, a board certified pediatrician and Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, these are some of the more important points to consider when making this decision:

• The long years of being in school is the most widely acknowledged difficulty. This includes four years of college, four years of medical school and at least three years of an internship and residency.
  
  


• The debt that many medical students build up to get through school is also a serious consideration. Anyway you look at it, medical school is not going to be cheap. Depending on whether you go to a public or private medical school, you might pay from $24,553 to $37,445 a year, and you will likely end up with an average of about $90,745 in debt.
  
  


• After completing all the training, all doctors still face the challenge of other high expenses. Aside from schooling and maintaining a successful practice, specialists such as neurosurgeons and obstetricians also often pay over $100,000 a year for malpractice insurance. Fortunately, pediatrics is generally considered a low risk area of medicine and traditionally have low malpractice insurance costs.
  
  


• Stress comes with the territory. Pediatricians must regularly deal with the hassles of being in a relationship with managed care and health insurance companies. Younger pediatricians are not as often bothered by this aspect as they have had to deal with this their entire careers. Older doctors, on the other hand, sometimes find fault in the HMO system since this is a newer aspect of medicine that they did not have to deal with earlier in their career.
  
  


• Completing an internship and residency is arduous and difficult, where new physicians have to endure 80 or 120 hours a week and 36 hour shifts. There are new policies, however, being implented by that will limit the hours that residents can work to no more than 80 hours a week as well as placing other limits on the number of consecutive hours a resident can work.