Ups and Downs in Pediatrics

From my own picture collection, taken in Collosseum, Italy.
Siblings playing with their parents' video camera.

It has just been two weeks since my first day in Pediatrics rotation, and I can't help being in this kind of love-hate relationship with my daily job. Our daily schedule is tight, we have to be present in the hospital around 6 am and start making daily subjective and objective examination to all the patients in the ward. There are 29 co-assistant in total so we will have several patients we will examine daily. Then we have to write it all down in the patient status, including the diagnostic and therapy planning. It is a very effective way to learn about clinical medicine, thou. Then, most of our days will be spent helping the residents observing the patients ( every 3 or one hour, depends on the diagnosis), assisting in some clinical procedure, or participating in group discussion. Everything will be ended around 3 in the afternoon and on some days we have night shifts, mean doing almost the same job we do during daytime, only during the whole night.

One Day in the Clinic

The doctor carefully explained about the medication prescribed. Haloperidol, Folic Acid, Clobazam.  None of them were familiar to the mother. She stared to a space that did not exist. Her ears were listening to the doctor's words, every single word. But her mind was spread into several thoughts at the same time.
She might need to stay for a month, or maybe more, in this city, 4 hours away from her home. She didn't have any place to stay, yet. Her husband might have to work harder than before. She would look for all the therapies, anything that could fix the problems. She might will have to leave her younger daughter at home. Her son might will never able to enter regular school, be a regular child.
Who will afford all the medication and medication fee, anyway?

And just moments ago, she discovered that her son was diagnosed with mental retardation.