A pediatrician's practice is pretty much split about three ways: the office practice, of course; the phone consultations; and hospitalized patients
The amount of time devoted to each one of these depends upon the physician's practice style, what epidemics are going around, and whether or not there are hospitalized patients.
You are welcome to come along and finish visiting my patients with me as we leave the nursery and complete my "rounds" on the pediatric floor.
You notice, as we enter the pediatric floor, the rooms on the left are just beginning to be remodeled. They are making semi-private rooms out of what was once two large surgical wards.
These wards used to be fairly constantly full of children undergoing tonsillectomies and ear surgery. However, most of these surgeries are performed on an outpatient basis now, which has dramatically decreased the use of these rooms.
In fact, there have been some major changes in the pattern of hospitalization of sick children. Much more is now being done at home, even with the use of home nurses.
Pediatricians don't seem to be hospitalizing children unless they are more ill; and, for some reason, it also seems we are more frequently seeing children in the office who have delayed coming in until they are quite ill.
In this room is Matthew. He is six and had his tonsils out yesterday. He had more postoperative bleeding than is usual so he was held overnight
He had six throat infections caused by "Strep" in a row; so it was felt best to take the tonsils out to hopefully decrease the risk of developing rheumatic heart disease.
There are very few other reasons for taking tonsils out. Tonsillectomy does not prevent snoring.
There is an ear surgeon in town who
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