Paediatrics

Definition

Paediatrics is medicine of children, the definition of children being debatable depending on who you ask. A 17 year-old with a rib fracture is likely to be treated as an adult despite legally being a child. The first rule of paediatrics is that children are not little adults. Do not treat them as such - medicine is different with children and treating them as small adults will annoy and frustrate your consultants.

A commonly found resident of the children's hospital...

Paediatric Skills

There are two important skills for paediatrics - using a different approach for children of different ages, and performing a developmental examination.

Categories

So there are four main areas to cover.

• Development (including growth, puberty and nutrition)is the one big field that comes up in paeds and nothing else. Learn about the key milestones - find out if your kid is keeping up in the rat race of childhood maturation!
• Neonatal medicine is a specialised and interesting field. What do you do if your patient can't express what is wrong, or communicate with you in any way? It's kind of like being a vet...
• Genetic disorders are a big area in paediatrics, since many disorders prevent children from reaching adulthood, so they are never encountered within other specialities.
• Finally, children have lots of organs and systems, just as adults do, and so we have looked into key areas in these. Check below for the list.

Body Systems and Specialities

For the purposes of this website, we have created special Paediatric categories. The categories are roughly the same as the adult ones with a few extras and a few taken out:

• Cardiology & Haematology
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology
• Gastroenterology
• Neurology
• Oncology
• Child Psychiatry
• Renal
• Respiratory

Case Studies

• Infection and Immunity Case Study