Age of Pediatrician matters?

[Anonymous]

Hi,
I am looking for a pediatrician for my upcoming first baby. I made an appointment with Sleep Hollow pediatrician associates. Because I didn't have any preference, the staff randomly assigned me a very young pediatrician (around late 20s, just graduate from school). I am a little bit worried that young pediatrician may not be experienced.
How do you think? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

It really depends on maturity level of said person. At my practice-Evers and Thiede-Evers is in his seventies and just wonderful and Thiede is about 35 and also wonderful ( and now she is a new mom!!). I think you can have a young doctor who is cutting edge on research and maybe has also been around children all his/her life and great on the compassion side and you can also have someone young who is technically good on research but just doesn't get it yet with kids. Hopefully the practice also has some older peds to give some balance.

[Anonymous]

My baby just had a 6M well baby visit, and the newest ped in the group saw him. She's been practicing for three weeks! I had no problem having her assess my baby.

[Anonymous]

There is a very young ped. in our practice, too. We had originally chosen to go with one of the older, "more seasoned" docs, but an unexpected weekend illness landed us in this young doctors office... And we LOVE him!! We went in there with a screaming 4 week old. I think an older doc may have just written it off as colic, but the younger doc may be more willing to think outside the box because they haven't seen it all ten thousand times before. Anyway, whatever the reasons may be, Dr. Fischelberg is AWESOME an I'm so glad we gave him a chance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a very young ped. in our practice, too. We had originally chosen to go with one of the older, "more seasoned" docs, but an unexpected weekend illness landed us in this young doctors office... And we LOVE him!! We went in there with a screaming 4 week old. I think an older doc may have just written it off as colic, but the younger doc may be more willing to think outside the box because they haven't seen it all ten thousand times before. Anyway, whatever the reasons may be, Dr. Fischelberg is AWESOME an I'm so glad we gave him a chance.

I almost left the pediatric practice we were using because I was fed up with the more "experienced" doctors, who just weren't listening or taking the necessary time with my kids. At one sick visit, we got their new doc, who looks all of 25 (but I'm sure is older than she looks), and LOVE HER. I will never schedule a well visit with anyone else, and hope to get her for sick visits too.

[Anonymous]

Our best pediatrician EVER was a lovely YOUNG woman. We almost cried when she moved to North Carolina, she was THAT good. One of the things I liked about her the best, was she wasn't afraid to say "I don't know the answer to that question, but let me find out". And then she did. She'd come back to us with the information, and was so good about working through options with us. We were dealing with my son who had a serious health condition, and our 3rd week-long hospital stay at only 2 months. We saw numerous doctors in the hospital... residents, attendings, specialists... but none of them were looking at the big picture. Our pediatrician came by EVERY day, talked to all of the doctors, and made sure that SHE had the full scoop. Thank God for her.


So... I think what some young doctors lack in terms of experience, they make up for in terms of passion.

[Anonymous]

The flip side to lack of experience is recent training. I think more important than both of those is someone who has a good sense of their own limitations and a good instinct for when something rises to being important.

I went with a young pediatrician on the grounds that a) it's likely to be rare that my kids have something strange b) she can always call on her more experienced partners if necessary (I think she's they type who would do so if she wasn't sure of something) and c) she seems to have a good sense of her own limitations (see above).

[Anonymous]

A close friend of mine is finishing her post-residency fellowship in a pediatric subspecialty and she would be top of my list of people to take care of my child. She just turned 30. I always think about her when I think about young doctors -- as other PPs have stated, they may be more familiar with recent trends in medicine and cutting edge research, and more willing to realize or admit when they don't have all the answers. Bottom line, I don't think age matters -- it's the trust and rapport you have with the doctor (and your intuition about how well they know what they're doing) that really counts.