When you have a kid, you need a kid doctor to tend to him when he is sick or injured as well as to do well-child exams. Pediatric medical staff are very well-versed on how to work well with children as well as in the type of care they typically need. There are many childhood illnesses that kids are susceptible to that adults rarely get. When you are looking locally for a doctor for babys, it may not be the closest pediatrician that you need. You may need to talk to several doctors so that you can get the one that most closely aligns with your needs and expectations.
There are also sometimes general pediatrician jobs open for those who want to work with kids. For those who are interested in the field, you can also ask the pediatrician about the jobs in the industry and what you will need to study to get into one of them. It can take a while to get the experience needed to work in a medical office, but many people find it to be highly rewarding work. When it’s time to take your child in to a doctor, you need to have one chosen and ready to see your child.
When you have a child, your world becomes in many ways about them and them alone. You want them to have the best possible chance in life, and the best possible life experiences. You want them to be able to experience their full potential and achieve great success later down the road. You want them to be happy and, of course, you want them to be healthy.
Keeping your kids healthy involves a number of things, from taking them to a child doctor – also known, perhaps more commonly, as a pediatrician – to getting them the vaccines that they need (which a child doctor and pediatric clinic can facilitate). Children should have regular check ups, which are different from the ones that adults should also be receiving. While the healthy adult will likely only need to go to their primary care physician about once every year, children need to go much more frequently during their first couple years of life. In fact, very small babies go every couple of months, something that lasts up through toddlerhood.
In part, this is due to the fact that very young babies are receiving a large number of vaccines from the child doctor that they visit. These vaccines for children are incredibly important, protecting them from everything from whooping cough (also known as pertussis) to measles and the chicken pox. Fortunately, they are also very widespread, more so than ever before.
The polio vaccine, for instance, covers more than ninety three percent of children here in the United States alone. And the MMR vaccine, which protects children against three diseases – measles, mumps, and rubella – is present in more than ninety one percent of all children who have reached or surpassed the recommended age to receive this vaccination. And other vaccinates that your child can receive from their child doctor have also been found to be incredibly necessary for keeping your child safe.
But no matter the vaccinations that they get from their child doctor, there are some illnesses that you simply cannot protect your child from. The common cold, for instance, is one such illness. The common cold is aptly named, with the typical adult and typical teenager getting, on average, as many as four colds over the course of the year. Children, however, get many more, up to eight colds in that same span of time.
This is the case for a number of reasons. For one, children are building up their immune systems, but these immune systems are not yet where they will be by the time that they reach their teenage and adult years, making them much more susceptible to colds and other such viruses and illnesses in the meantime. And while the typical baby has protection in the form of immunity from the mother in the first six months of life, this fades out of their systems after this period, leaving them more susceptible to catching a cold than ever before.
Fortunately, colds are very, very rarely dangerous, and someone who contracts a cold is likely to be just fine in about a week. However, there are certainly cases in which you should take your child to see their child doctor, primarily if you think that the cold is actually something else. The flu, for instance, can have many of the same symptoms as a bad cold, but is far more dangerous when contracted by very young children, who are one of the most at risk populations when it comes to developing serious and even life threatening complications as a result of the flu.
Aside from illnesses, taking your child into your child doctor is also important if you suspect that they are allergic to something or if they have had a full blown allergic reaction. After all, allergies are common here in the United States, especially among children. The data backs this up, showing that more than five percent of all children found to be between the ages of twelve and of seventeen had at least one food allergy in the year of 2016. Of course, this percentage doesn’t even account for other types of allergies – or for the prevalence of allergies in kids of all ages.
