I went to medical school to be a pediatrician. I was a secretary after college. My job was to be the secretary for the 3 nursing supervisors and 27 head nurses at the local medical center. The hospital was just setting up its NICU and the head nurse relied on me to go to the medical school library in my "spare time" and copy research articles, look up funding sites, etc. I loved her and found neonatology fascinating. I also found the head nurse for the pediatric ward helpful and congenial (not that I didn't get along fairly well with all the head nurses). I had a minor in Chemistry so had all my premed requirements under my belt, so to speak. So 6 months into the secretarial job, I applied for medical school with the idea of going into neonatology or pediatrics. I spent my "spare time" in med school hanging out in those areas (or at the beach....) and chose my internship so I could work with Roberta Ballard who was then at Mt. Zion in San Francisco. She was wonderful to watch with the tiny preemies but I found I enjoyed working with families and older kids more, so on into general peds and no regrets. Vicki wrote: > > In a message dated 10/9/1999 5:10:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time, > writes: > > > That must have been the first thing that made me think about going into > > peds <G>. Oh, and peds rotations at my med school didn't start until the > > "late" hour of 7:30 am. After medicine and surgery rounds starting before > > sunrise, I was convinced! > > Another good topic! Why did you decide to become a pediatrician? Was it > what you always wanted to do even before med school, or did something in > school convince you? > For me, peds was very low on the list when I started med school. I couldn't > see myself taking care of a bunch of screaming kids. My first peds rotation > was heme/onc, which should have turned me off completely to peds, but it > really didn't. Much to my surprise, I really enjoyed working with kids. > What impressed me, though, was that pediatricians really liked their > patients. Remember internal medicine and surgery rotations, when the > residents and interns called their patients by endearing names like "gomer" > and "beached whale"? I got the impression that they really hated their > patients. Pediatricians actually enjoyed seeing, talking to and even playing > with their patients! I didn't want to go through life hating my > patients--that just didn't sound like it would be any fun. I have no > regrets--I still like my patients, and even some of their parents! > > Moshe Adler, MD >