Pediatric subspecialties

[cricket]

Hey

 

Just wondering, what are the differences in the day to day duties of the various pediatric subspecialties vs those of internal medicine subspecialties. Eg. what's the difference between a pediatric cardiologist vs IM cardiologist? or peds GI vs IM GI?

 

Also, what are the earning potentials for all the various subspecialties. My understanding is that pediatrics and psychiatry are notorious for being the "underpaid" specialties. Is this idea still the case today?

[007]

The difference between peds vs internal really is the obvious....and stemming from that, in peds subspecialties you're dealing with a lot of congenital diseases whereas in adult it's more acquired diseases. But if you were in GI for example, you'd also be dealing with IBD in both populations. You still see patients in the office in both settings and for both GI and cardiology, there is the potential to do procedures. For example, you could be trained in doing some interventional cardiology but in peds it would be to determine anatomy or do some simple repairs rather than cleaning out blocked arteries. In GI, they do scopes etc, but the kids are usually more sedated and it requires more coordination with other services (like anesthesia). For endocrine, there is still a lot of diabetes in both specialties, but perhaps the difference is that usually kids with diabetes are seen by an endocrinologist or a general pediatrician with extra interest in it, whereas the well-managed adult diabetic would be mostly followed by their family physician. And in all cases you'd still follow inpatients whether you were doing IM or peds. I think some of the difference in people choosing IM or peds is whether they can handle parents involvement and some of the ethical issues surrounding that and if they like kids/cranky kids. Both specialties have their own complexities...the social and congenital aspects can be interesting in kids, and adults tend to be more complex because of their multiple comorbidities.

 

And yes, as far as I know, pediatricians are paid less than their IM counterparts.