Paediatrics So Far

Hello! Greetings from a chirpy but rather tired girl. Well, technically I'm starting to wonder how much longer I can still justify use of the word 'girl' *cough*

Anyway, this week has been absolutely great! The nice and willing to teach consultant is back! And I think (think-lah okay) he's quite pleased with my team involvment so far. hehe. So I'm one happy camper as well! :)

Been able to see quite a few patients. And various presentations. Interestingly, Paediatrics is so different than adult medicine because of the social side of things. In Paediatrics, taking a social history is immensely important. Due to  the fact that kids can't really take full care of themselves yet, we as health care professionals have a responsiblity to make sure they are receiving the best quality of life as possible. Not only in the medical sense, but also the care by the family as well.

If there is something dodgy going on (like abuse), we have a duty to set things into motion so that the kids will be able to have the best outcome at the end of the day. It's quite sad to see kids like that though.

Sad things aside, did I mention that the little ones are SOOO cute? omgosh.. haha. Am still not very good at dealing with older kids and teenagers though. Harder to get through. Hmm...

I am quite interested in paediatrics... so who knows, can consider this as a future career pathway! But we will see how things go. Paediatrics is like general medicine for kids; but with the extra challenge of diagnosing things when the patient can't talk or can't describe symptoms well enough yet. And it's not easy to engage a kid or teenager. And the best thing is that anything you do that benefits them will help them in the long-term future.

This is where I can really can see where the science and art of Medicine meets each other. :)