When Carrie Quinn was training to be a pediatrician, she dutifully memorized the list of symptoms for meningitis. She learned the right antibiotics for pneumonia. But when she got into the clinic, she found herself unprepared for what actually concerned parents.
"What I was actually faced with wasn't seriously sick children," Quinn, who's now the executive director of the Mount Sinai Parenting Center, said on a panel at Aspen Ideas: Health, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic. More often, it was parents anxious over what to do about their kids' behavior issues or language delays.
Ben Danielson, another panelist and the medical director of the Odessa Brown Children's Clinic in Seattle, jumped in: "You made the joke the other day that, so often, a [doctor] who finishes pediatric residency would way rather intubate a baby than talk about breastfeeding." Talking about how to parent might be one of hardest parts of being a pediatrician.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/06/reinventing-kids-doctors-visit/592342/
