Today I got to shadow Dr. Lisa McGuire in the pediatric neurology clinic. This area of medicine is different in that they see a subspecialty of pediatrics. So these children come to her through a reference from another physician. Pediatric neurologist primarily deal with children suffering from epilepsy, ADHD, Asperger's Syndrome, and seizures. Today I got to see it all. There was a baby who had a series of seizures which resulted in the baby being sent to the emergency room several times. Dr. McGuire assured the parents that babies at the patient are developing normally even if they are having seizures. Few babies have seizures and out of the ones that do have seizures even less will have reoccurring ones. Usually these go away on their own. Another patient's parents had to drive hours in order to get help for their baby girl. This girl was also suffering from seizures but they were continuous to the extent that it was abnormal and she was starting to have development problems. Dr. McGuire ordered EEG tests for the daughter for that day so that the family wouldn't have to drive the two hours again to get help for their daughter.
Pediatric neurology is apparently a relatively new field of medicine. At St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis only have two Pediatric Neurologists in the whole hospital, however they are in high demand. She does have both inpatient and outpatients that she attends to, however her speciality makes it that the inpatient care it's more of a consultation than an actual procedure which I've learned can be less stressful.
I would continue talking about the rest of the patients that I saw today but, there were no "interesting" cases and I don't feel like writing a paragraph about what I'm not personally passionate about.
My impressions of this field is that the environment is not crazy stressful (unlike surgery) which I like and I honestly had a great time seeing the patients and seeing Dr. McGuire do her job.I'm definitely am not saying that her job is the easy, by no mean no. Dr. McGuire had to be able to read many EEG charts and deal again with both her young patients and their families and since these children tend to come to her for more urgent reasons, that in itself is stressful. I was actually a bit sad that my time with her had ended. I liked learning more about her speciality and more about specialities in general and how they differed from general pediatrics or more broad fields both the advantages and disadvantages. But as they say, "All's well that ends well", that's Shakespeare by the way.
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| Just thought the picture was cute |
