I recently completed my Pediatrics rotation, and it was great! For those who may not already know, I’m interested in specializing in peds, so you already know ya girl was ready for this rotation. Here’s how it went.

Weeks 1-2: My first two weeks on Peds were spent on the Pulmonary-Adolescent team at Children’s Hospital in DC. My team saw patients with acute and chronic pulmonary conditions such as asthma and cystic fibrosis. Since I rotated during flu season, it seemed like we had a million asthma exacerbation patients. Viral illnesses such as RSV, influenza, etc are triggers for acute asthma exacerbations which require hospital admission and breathing treatments. My team also saw adolescent patients between the ages of 10 and 19. Most of the adolescent patients I saw were struggling with eating disorders and required hospitalization for nutritional rehab and observation. Managing these patients consisted of evaluating the patient’s basic metabolic panel, establishing diet and caloric goals, biweekly weight checks, as well as monitoring for refeeding syndrome.

Weeks 3-4 I spent the next two weeks at Children’s on an inpatient team that managed patients with metabolic disorders. Working on this team was pretty cool, as I got to work with patients with very rare conditions such as Lesch Nyhan and glucose storage diseases. These patients were very complicated and required multidisciplinary management (e.g. dietary, genetic, wound care, etc).

Weeks 5-6 I spent the next two weeks in the outpatient peds clinic at HUH.  The outpatient clinic is low-key student run which was great because we got a lot of practice performing physical exams and taking histories. Most patients came in for normal well-child visits (i.e. check ups) and physical exams.  Once we finished seeing the patients, we presented to our attending who would then see the patient, go over the plan, and prescribe medications if needed.  

Weeks 7-8 My last two weeks were spent in the NICU and nursery seeing newborns (so cute).  My nursery rotation consisted of morning rounds, performing newborn exams, monitoring for hyperbilirubinemia (dangerous in babies), etc.  The highlight of this rotation was definitely feeding the babies in the nursery.

Overall I really enjoyed my peds rotation (not the shelf exam), and appreciated the variety of experiences it had to offer. Now onto OB/Gyn!