Pediatricians and the clinicians who care for children writing on KevinMD about child health: childhood illness, development, vaccines and the parents who refuse them, breastfeeding and the pressure around it, childhood obesity, prevention, and the realities of caring for young patients and their families. Most contributors are pediatricians. For a maintained record of what pediatricians have said about children's health since 2004, from fever and sleep through obesity, abuse, teenagers, and Medicaid, see Children's health: what pediatricians say, in their own words. For what physicians have said about vaccines and vaccine hesitancy, from the autism claim through measles, exemptions, and federal policy, see Vaccines: what physicians say, in their own words. For what child psychiatrists and pediatricians have said about children's and teens' mental health, see Mental health: what psychiatrists and physicians say, in their own words. For what pediatricians have said about breastfeeding and postpartum care, see Women's health: what physicians say, in their own words.
As a pediatrician, I encourage families to search online for health advice. Yet how you search and where you click matters. Tips for you and your time with “Dr. Google” or “Surgeon Bing.”
The Pew Internet Project’s research finds that over 70% of Internet users in the United States say they have looked online for health information in the last year. Furthermore, most health information seekers (ie freaked out parents …
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7 tips for becoming a savvy digital parent
A recent blog comes to the conclusion that non-vaccinating parents believe their pediatrician “would have to be staggeringly incompetent, negligent or malicious to keep administering (vaccines).” Using this as the premise, this pediatrician goes on to say that these patients should be dismissed from our practices.
First off, these parents don’t think we’re the enemy. The reason they bring their kids to see …
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How to answer difficult vaccine questions from parents
As an intern in the neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU), I am one of several doctors who rarely see or touch the tiny patients we treat. We sit in a back room off a distant hallway, far removed from the babies, reviewing lab results and blood gases on the computer. Much of the time I feel like the Wizard of Oz, controlling a marvelous machine from behind a curtain.
The only uninterrupted …
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An infant made my medical training feel worthwhile
I recently fulfilled my civic responsibility by completing a stint on jury duty. Somehow I had never previously been summoned. Being the Law & Order junkie that I am, I was kind of awestruck by my first up-close exposure to the court system.
I sat erect and at attention in the courtroom, listening to the judge charge us prospective jurors. I even became slightly teary when he spoke of the important role we …
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The difficulty in diagnosing autism: Feeling like judge and jury
“It’s a disgrace to the human race.”
The talented, high school senior physically cringed as she described the app, adding, “it’s just horrifying what people put on there.”
Teens in my office have nearly universally agreed in the repulsive nature of one of the newest social networking apps called Yik Yak. The app is causing disruption within our local community; being described as a way to cyberbully, offend, and generally disgust anyone anonymously. App users, or …
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Anonymous social networking apps: What parents can do about them
My friend breathed a sigh of relief as she finished her last clinic visit for the day and headed down the hall to the physician workroom. It was only 5pm. She still had notes to write and labs to check, and as a senior resident she needed to make it back to the hospital wards to check on her team’s interns, to get updates on the afternoon’s events and help …
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The doctor will see you now, or will she?
A hospital is not the homiest of establishments. The bright neon lights, strange smells and piercing high-pitched beeps that radiate from the rooms of dormant patients fill the halls in a symphony of annoying sensory stimulation. But to someone recovering from a relationship that just ended, hospitals are heavenly. When the lonely silence of your one bedroom apartment is overwhelmingly loud, beeping IV lines and incoherent mumbles are surprisingly therapeutic.
As …
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What spending time with critically ill patients taught me
Adults are the ones who are supposed to be stressed, not kids. Childhood is supposed to be the stress-free part of life, right?
Well, maybe not. At least not for teens.
According to a recently released survey from the American Psychological Association, teens are actually more stressed than their parents.
Researchers surveyed 1950 adults and 1,018 teens last summer and asked them a whole bunch of questions about the stress in their lives, and how …
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Let’s do something about teen stress
I’ve been working with the latest electronic medical record (EMR) for almost a year now. You know the one. There are many positive changes, to be sure. It has helped me more than a few times with calculating doses for kids’ medications. I can now easily check in on my patients’ progress when they are admitted to the hospital. And, of course, the notes are far more legible.
But what do …
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We are in the age of copy and paste medicine
The tests came fast and furious. The diagnosis didn’t.
One doctor was certain it was psychosomatic. My twin younger brothers had been born a few months earlier, and I, seeking attention, was refusing to walk. My mother kept looking.
Another doctor couldn’t figure it out but gave a piece of advice. “You have other children, right? Be grateful. Take this one home, keep him comfortable, and when he is gone take comfort …
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A doctor’s powerful personal story about vaccines
Vaccine coverage rates, overall, remain very strong in the USA. Well over 90% of kids are well-vaccinated, and the rates of vaccine-preventable diseases remains very low. Newer vaccines have proven especially safe and effective, including immunizations against severe diarrheal illness and cancers of the cervix and throat. In many ways, we are staying ahead in our battle against vaccine-preventable disease.
Yet: there are still pockets of intense resistance …
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The failure of vaccine messages
One aspect of the endless vaccine debate is the aspect of coercion some parents feel about requiring children to be vaccinated before they can go to school. The government mandates vaccination. But this isn’t really an absolute requirement. Although all 50 states ostensibly require vaccination, all but 2 (Mississippi and West Virginia) allow parents to opt out for religious reasons, and 19 states allow this for philosophical reasons. (See Read more…
Vaccines: An unprecedented use of state power?
A recent article in the New Republic, provocatively titled “ADHD Does Not Exist,” starts out well enough. The author, a psychiatrist with “over 50 years experience” points to the fact that ADHD describes a collection of symptoms, rather than their underlying cause. Using stimulants to control these symptoms, he argues, is analogous to prescribing pain medication for cardiac chest pain rather than addressing the underlying circulatory problem.
But my …
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ADHD and the value of uncertainty
CNN recently released a report on picky eaters. This short piece featured the family of a picky pre-schooler, Harper O’Bamsawin. The brave O’Bamsawin family opened their house to the world, seeking solutions to improve their dinner table experience. The result, however, was an expose of common problems left unsolved.
As the camera revealed a typical meal in Harper’s home, it quickly became clear that Harper’s parents have fallen into …
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Tips on getting your picky eater to eat
I was up helping my son for the majority of the night. He’s got a stomach bug (which he got from his brother) therefore I was up dealing with the enormous mess that comes with vomiting in the middle of the night. I know you know my woe. This is the second round of this bug at our house so I was clearly exhausted when 6am rolled around.
First thing I …
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What to remember about children and caffeine
When someone asks me what a developmental pediatrician does, I tell him or her that I treat children who have a variety of developmental problems, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Without fail, that disclosure elicits some sort of an emotional reaction.
Many people have strong opinions about whether the disorder really exists. Parents are still being told, by family and so-called friends, that it’s “their fault,” and that all …
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ADHD: To medicate or not
I gotta say, the daily commute has been feeling a bit hairy lately. Seems like I’m passing accidents more frequently. Watching a bit more weaving. I can’t be sure that it’s all related to distracted driving, but sure seems like a lot of it is. Every day I witness drivers looking down at phones at stoplights, missing the change to green. I even saw a smartphone mounted to one car’s driver side dash and the driver scrolling through websites …
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Education on distracted driving can’t start early enough
I have just turned on my computer. It is midnight. I should be trying to sleep right now.
My 5-year-old is sick and I am on call for the next few nights. Fortunately, my daughter should get better in a day or two. She needs Tylenol for her fever, mama’s love and time to kick this virus. But as I sat in bed holding her and waiting for her fever to break, …
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A pediatrician’s survival story: Remembering the children
