What is a medical career that involves working with children? Something different than a pediatrician though..

Bubbles
#1. July 13th, 2008, at 12:07 AM.

There are many specialists that only work with children. For example we have quite a few allergists that only work with children in our area. There are also those that only treat cancer in children.

A pediatrician is like your general practitioner. You can specialize in certain areas and then further specialize by only working with children.

So research specialities and then make a fit….
psychologists
bone doctors that deal with the spine
doctors that only treat children with down syndrome…..

spongebob squarepants
#2. July 15th, 2008, at 5:24 PM.

You could be a pediatric nurse, and work with sick kids/babies in hospitals in just about any area you could think of: oncology, intensive care, asthma case management, pediatric emergency room nurse, the list goes on and on… You could also work in public health with teen moms, or doing home visits to kids’ houses to make sure their parents are managing their medical issues properly, working with them if they’re not.

School nursing (it’s actually a specialty!) and work with kids at school. You could also be a pediatric nurse practioner and work with a doctor seeing kids as patients in clinics or in hospitals.

You could also specialize in pediatric mental health, working with kids who were abused, or with other psychiatric diagnoses.

There are two main routes in healthcare: being a physician or being a nurse. If you want to work with kids, but you’re not sure about the exact area, going the nursing route may offer you more flexiability, as you would still get to work with kids, but you would have more variety (mental health, public health, hospital, etc.) and in which capacity (as an RN, or a nurse practioner). You also wouldn’t be locked into a specific area, and you would have the ability to move around if you would want to.

blueiron511
#3. July 18th, 2008, at 10:29 AM.

Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapist, and Speech Pathologist all can sub special in treatment of children. These rehabilitation disciplines can focus on issues of development delay, autism, language skills, accent, balance, and the list goes on. There most likely is a clinic or outpatient department of a hospital providing such services in your community. Search them out and contact them about an informational interview. Most clinicians are interested in helping a potential new therapist understand some aspect of the field of rehabilitation.

Best of luck on your career search.