TEACHING THE BROADER ASPECTS OF PEDIATRICS

[摘要] THE PHYSICIAN who cares for children and the parents who consult him tend nowadays to be less occupied in their visits with physical disease, more with growth and development, behavior problems, school and social adjustment. There are well known reasons for this shift, which include the minimizing of infection by means of sanitation, immunization and the antibiotic drugs, the increased awareness on the part of parents and physicians of the importance of fostering the child's total development and total adjustment, the interest in preventive psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine. The trend will probably continue, especially as more physicians are trained who are interested and helpful in these areas.If pediatrics does not accommodate itself to the increasing desire of parents for preventive guidance, the vacuum might be filled by a new specialty, perhaps from within the field of psychology. In some ways this would seem a logical development, since the cost of training a physician to be competent in all aspects of child care tends to put his services beyond the means of many. But it would be an unfortunate backward step to divide again the child's emotional well-being from his physical well-being, to divide his development from his diseases, and to entrust them to two separate specialists.At the present time departments of pediatrics and pediatric hospital services, in their training programs, are going on the assumption that the physician who practices pediatrics, part or full time, is the person who ought to treat the child's illnesses, immunize him, supervise his physical growth, guide his emotional development, especially in the early years, and be able to advise his parents whenever any problem arises, even though the assistance may consist only in knowing to which other expert or agency to refer him.

[学科分类] 儿科学