Another emerging specialty of medicine

Behold the adolescent medicine specialist.

Comments

doc-AC
This is stupid. Why do teenagers, who virtually never get sick, need a specialty to take care of them? Plus, the diseases that they do get are covered by other specialties. A person has to do a fellowship to learn about the dangers of STD’s in youth, or that it’s important to emphasize confidentiality?
Why does everything have to be so specialized today? If you want to take care of teenagers, just do it! They really aren’t that difficult to work with.
And don’t get me started on geriatrics as a specialty… if you’re note qualified to take care of old people after 3-years of internal medicine, something is very wrong with either you or the training program. 90% of my patients are older than 60.
Blog, MD
Speaking as a pediatrician, having specialists dedicated to the care of a distinct subpopulation is not “stupid”. Teenagers most certainly do have health care problems that go beyond STDs.
I surmise that doc-ac may commenting on something outside of his area of expertise given that 90% of his patients are older than 60 years of age.
Kevin, just an FYI, adolescent medicine is hardly an “emerging specialty”. The Society for Adolescent Medicine has been around since the 1950s. Adolescent Medicine has its own subspecialty boards (note: links to a 103 page .pdf from the Am. Board of Pediatrics with the content outline for the subspecialty exam. Doc-ac might want to review so that he/she can understand exactly what the specialty entails). It also has a journal that’s been around for 20 years.
(NB: I trained at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, which has one of the oldest adolescent medicine programs in the country).
Charity Doc
Guess who takes care of adolescents more than anybody else, us ER docs. That’s right.
From trauma related injuries, to drug overdoses, to sexual assaults, to STD’s, pregnancies that their parents never suspected, common sore throats and paratonsilar abscesses, DKA, you name it. They show up to our ED’s in hoards. Occasionally, they do need to be admitted and this is where it gets tricky sometimes. The on call pediatricians don’t wanna admit them because older than 15, they’re practically adults with complex adult problems. But the internists on call refuse to admit them, too, citing that their malpractice insurance does not cover pediatric patients. So every year during at least one of the medical staff meetings we rehash this subject, and the age limit of which goes to peds and which goes to medicine changes from 15 to 16 back and forth back and forth.
SarahW
Pediatric practices in my area are geared towards younger children.
Visiting one is a humiliating experience for any young man over 11… at least if you ask my son, who is now in his mid-teens. Its as bad a fit as trying to place my son (now in his mi-teens), a 6-foot near-200-pounder, on a toddler chair .
Its not just the eating room geared to the under 10 population – Perhaps it is unfair to his pediatrician, but he definately gave off a vibe that my son was too old to see him once he hit puberty.
I have yet to find an internist willing to take on any patient younger than 17.
That leaves a rather wide gap into which my mid-teen son, whom I guess bucks the trend of being perfectly ragingly healthy, falls.
My son has “something” going on systemically. He needs an internist to tie it all together, one familiar enough with the illnesses that manifest in teenagers to be an effective care-provder for him.
His opthamologist has given me the name of an adolesceent specialist, and I don’t think it’s silly at all. Its a big relief to have someone willing and well-suited to see him.
DrLou
The perfect physician for adolescents are Med-Peds trained docs. Board certified in both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, we offer the best of both worlds. Of course, as a Med-Peds trained physician, I’m not biased

Another emerging specialty of medicine

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