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Pediatrics fulfilling despite challenges, medical student learns

¹ President, American Academy of Pediatrics

During a recent AAP executive committee lunch in Colorado, we learned our waiter would be entering medical school in the fall. Discovering that his customers were pediatricians, he asked us if we agreed with what he was hearing from other physicians: Were we angry and/or frustrated, and was medicine as a profession so unattractive that he should change his mind and do something else before it was too late?

Our answers were short and to the point. As pediatricians, we were not only happy in our career choice but also would do it all over again. And, while profound changes in medicine were creating turmoil, the opportunities were even greater. We told him that similar questions had been raised during our careers. When I first entered pediatrics (in the 1950s), for example, Charles May, M.D., FAAP, then editor of Pediatrics, wrote a commentary titled "Can the New Pediatrics Be Practiced?" In addition, there were articles about the dissatisfied pediatrician syndrome. As antibiotics and immunizations profoundly altered the content of pediatric practice, behavioral and developmental issues came to the forefront. Polio was replaced by learning disabilities; birth defects (prevented through earlier prenatal diagnosis and appropriate vitamin supplementation) were largely replaced by developmental delay; and meningitis was replaced by intentional injury.