Some of the many things that I learned on my Pediatrics rotation at Dr. Hurwitz were about how to quickly assess if a patient is in distress, how to work precisely and efficiently when there is a high patient volume, and many medical topics that were relevant to pediatrics. I also learned how to develop trust with both parents and children so that they would allow me to examine them.
On this rotation, I worked alongside Dr. Hurwitz, a pediatrician with many years of experience. One of the many things he taught me was to quickly determine if a child “was going to make it.” I had to remind myself that majority of problems that patients came in with did not necessarily require interventions. For example, not every child with abdominal pain required an ultrasound, and not every episode of vomiting was reason for concern. Dr. Hurwitz explained to me that as a general rule, if there is a serious issue in a pediatric patient, the problem will persist beyond a single episode.
During this rotation, I learned that when there is a high patient volume it is important to develop a system for yourself so that you do things efficiently and without error. For example, when performing a strep culture, I had a method of setting everything up before swabbing the patient so that there would be no confusion if there was more than one patient at a time requiring a culture. I applied that same concept when taking vital signs and plotting growth charts when families came in with more than one child at once for a well visit. I think that being able to create systems like these for myself will serve me well for the future in practice.
I used the time on this rotation to become more proficient at my pediatric physical exam skills. Like we are always told, children are not little adults. It took me some time to become proficient at looking in baby ears and listening to children’s lungs. Part of this was learning how to approach a baby, toddler or older child in a way that they would trust me. As a mom myself, I could understand that parents often prefer that their child not be examined multiple times, however, I still always asked since I knew that this was my opportunity for gaining proficiency in pediatric physical exam. Dr. Hurwitz also would call me to a patient room if there was an interesting physical exam finding.
Another opportunity on this rotation that I appreciated was that Dr. Hurwitz would call all the PA students to his office to discuss interesting patient cases and answer our questions on patients that we saw. He also assigned us topics to present at these meetings. We presented on topics such as bronchiolitis, new fever guidelines, precocious puberty, among others. I also gained a lot from working with PA Chaya who is a fellow York graduate. She took the time to answer my many questions and share her approach for different issues that arise in pediatrics.
In conclusion, I gained a lot from this rotation and learned many new skills. I now appreciate how a pediatric office runs, which children require intervention and treatment which parents just need reassurance. I also learned to recognize normal from abnormal and the treatments for many different conditions as well as vaccine schedules. I will take this experience with me and continue to improve on the skills that I have acquired.
