Become a Pediatrician
Working with children in the medical field can be one of the most satisfying and humorous career choices a person can make.
A pediatrician is a specialist physician who diagnoses and treats children's illnesses. Working in this sector of the medical field you can specialize in the various types of diseases that can affect infants, children and teenagers and track their development from birth to adulthood.
Pediatricians with a team of other health care professionals, such as general practitioners, nurses, and social workers to assess and treat children will a wide variety of ailments. For the most part they do deal with day-to-day ailments and look after the health of newborn babies. They treat minor injuries and infectious diseases and handle immunizations. Some paediatricians are also surgeons for children, while others specialize in medical conditions affecting children, such as autoimmune diseases.
Becoming a pediatrician requires many years of university study and work as a resident in a hospital. In order to become a doctor, you need to allow at least 8 years of university beyond high school graduation. This includes 4 years of undergraduate study and 4 years of medical school. Once you graduate as a medical doctor and want to become a paediatrician, you still have a few years of studying ahead of you. You will have to complete a residency for at least two years and take further courses in the diagnosis and treatment of childhood diseases.
All states of the United States and all provinces of Canada require pediatricians to be licensed to work in each one. A license to work as a pediatrician in one area does not automatically qualify you to work in another. You do have to contact the medical licensing board to ensure that you meet the requirements. After you complete the residency training required, you then have to write a rigid licensing exam and for pediatricians this is set by a specialty board.
Doctors who wish to work as a pediatrician should intern in pediatric programs offered by various hospitals. There are also various areas of specialty within this field, which include:
- Adolescent Medicine
- Pediatric Cardiology
- Pediatric Critical Care
- Developmental Pediatrics
- Pediatric Emergency Medicine
- Pediatric Endocrinology
- Pediatric Gastroenterology
- Pediatric Oncology
- Pediatric Infectious Diseases
- Neonatology
- Pediatric Nephrology
- Pediatric Pulmonology
- Pediatric Rheumatology
Although the long journey to becoming a pediatrician does not officially begin until you enter university, you can give yourself a good start by taking science courses in high school and achieving high grades. You will need to have a high average in your undergraduate degree courses because getting accepted into a medical school is very competitive. You can gain acceptance into medical school with a degree in almost any field, but the most widely accepted undergraduate program is a Bachelor of Science.
In addition to having high marks in these courses, you must also take and pass the MCAT exam. Once you complete your degree program and the MCAT, you apply to a medical school and if you are being considered for a seat, you will be called for an interview. The first few years will involve mostly course work, but after this a lot of your training will take place in hospitals in addition to class work.
