At 6:00 am, Dr. Jason Wiles steps off the elevator at Kosair Children’s Hospital and briskly trots down the hall to see his patients. His daily battle with the clock has begun: in the next two hours, he needs to visit ten sick kids and write medical records on each one.
Today, he checks in with one girl who had a nasty asthma attack last night, then stops to see a preschool boy with dehydration. (The little guy’s body doesn’t have enough fluids because he’s been vomiting them back up.) Both of these patients should be all right in a day or two. But for now, they need to stay in the hospital where Jason can monitor their recovery.
He quickly looks in on his other eight patients and writes a few notes about each. Then he meets up with his boss, the Attending Physician.
Together, Jason and his Attending visit the same ten patients Jason already saw this morning. His boss asks how Jason is planning to treat each one, and sometimes makes a few changes to their plans of care.
After four years of college and four years of medical school, you’d think Jason could do this work on his own. But technically, he’s still in training—the human body is so incredibly complex that it takes many years to become an independent physician! Jason is a “resident” (a sort of advanced student), and these daily “rounds” with his Attending give him the opportunity to see how an experienced doctor cares for kids.
By the time Jason finishes his residency, this final phase of training, he will have invested a total of fourteen years of his life into becoming a pediatrician. That may be longer than you’ve been alive! But if you ever wind up in the hospital under Dr. Jason’s care, you’ll know that he’s an expert, able to do everything possible to make you well.
Becoming an MD
Kosair Children’s Hospital is not your average medical facility. Bright colors are everywhere, from the floor tiles to the signs on the walls. A huge hot-air balloon hovers over the main lobby. There’s a playroom with movies and video games on every floor, and the gift shop is stocked with stuffed animals and children’s books.
So if you have to get sick, this is definitely the place to go! According to Keri Shain, Kosair’s Marketing Manager, the hospital sees about 109,000 sick kids each year. Jason and the other doctors are all pediatricians—doctors who are specially trained to care for patients under the age of eighteen.
But when Jason was a teenager, he wasn’t at all sure he’d end up working at a hospital. “I always kind of wanted to do medicine—at least, it was on the back burner,” says Jason. But he was also contemplating a career in psychology or even investment banking. When he finally headed off to college, he picked “none of the above” and majored in chemistry.
It was an interesting subject, Jason remembers—and for him, pretty easy. But one thing was missing: “I felt like I needed to be around people more.” So after finishing college, he applied to medical school, where he could put his scientific knowledge to work helping others.
That’s when school became difficult for Jason. For the first time in his life, he was forced to spend hours every night with his textbooks. Doctors-in-training spend their first two years of medical school cramming tons of information into their heads—“the things that cause disease, how the body reacts to them, and how you treat them,” explains Jason. So he spent hours every day listening to professors lecture on a huge array of topics, then went home to hit the books.
But like any medical student, Jason’s third and fourth years of school were very different from his first two. There weren’t so many lectures, and he actually started to work with patients! He spent much of his time in different “rotations.”
For a few weeks, he might interact with Psychiatry patients (people with mental illnesses) and the doctors who treat them. Then he’d switch to Internal Medicine, where he might see a string of heart patients. During this time, Jason sometimes worked 80 hours per week—and that was before he did his studying! If you’re wondering how much that really is, consider this: you’re only at school about 35 hours a week, and most adults work about 40 hours.
Yet Jason stuck with his dream of becoming a pediatrician. In spring 2008, he finally graduated from the University of Louisville as an MD (medical doctor), and began his residency at Kosair.
Being a Resident
Jason still works 80-hour weeks as a resident. His “normal” workday starts at 6 am, and every fourth day, he’s also “on call.” That means he’s in charge of admitting new patients (say, a girl who broke her leg while ice skating and needs surgery). As patients comes in, Jason examines them and conducts a health history, then write up doctor’s orders for the other hospital staffers to follow.
When he’s on call, he works his normal 6 am shift, and he has to stay from 2:30-11:30 in the evening—or sometimes, all night long! “Most days, you get some sleep,” he says. (The hospital provides small bedrooms for on-call doctors.) But there’s so much going on that slumber is not guaranteed. His pager could go off at any minute, and then he may need to rush back down to the emergency room. A resident’s work is never done.
Medicine is definitely an exhausting—but rewarding—career. For kids thinking about becoming a physician, Jason advises, “don’t give up on your dream.” Because med school is so rough, he suggests that anyone thinking about doctoring should learn how to study now. “Even if your classes seem easy,” advises Jason, “teach yourself to be disciplined . . . that will help when you have to sit and read for hours at a time.”
Of course, the hard work does have a payoff. Once Jason finishes his residency, he may earn more than $200,000 each year! (In comparison, a first-year schoolteacher is lucky to earn $40,000.) But the money isn’t the biggest reward of being a pediatrician.
“It’s seeing a patient get better, and knowing that your choices in their care made a difference,” says Jason with a smile. “And let’s face it—kids are fun, even when they’re sick.”
Copyright © 2008 George Halitzka. All rights reserved.
