General peds questions

enzati · Jan 18, 2016

I'm a manager that "grew up" on my inpatient cardiac pediatric cariology floor after coming to it from the adult cardiac world, so I understand! I'll give you my thoughts as well as some interview advice.

Peds is definitely different. The two biggest clinical differences I noted was (obviously) need to really know different vitals, lab values, and developmental levels. This last one is vitally important. You can look up VS and labs, but it takes a lot more time to understand how to treat a adolescent vs a toddler. The second was understanding that you're treating the ENTIRE family, not just the patient. Everything the parents do affects the children, so if they smoke/don't care well for themselves/don't have a job/don't understand the kids meds/etc etc etc that really can affect the child's medical outcome. Not only that, but you're dealing with these people's (hopefully) most valuable thing in the world to them. So emotions run very high and expectations are sometimes even higher. You need to be to communicate with everyone, at their level, wherever it is!

My advice for inteviewing is to really know why you want to make the leap. Please don't say that you "love kids". Everyone says this, and it's definitely true, but doesn't explain everything. Better things to say for the change is that you want a challenge, love the idea of the variety of ages (unless a nicu!), or find yourself wanting to work in a different culture (cause it definitely is different). Take what I've told you above and decide what would be your biggest challenges and really speak to them. Will you need to focus on leaning normal vitals? Dealing with families? Whatever it is, be honest and forthright. Most managers dislike "fake" sounding people. Everyone has challenges, the truly confident people can speak to and overcome them. Be ready to answer behavioral based questions (tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a patient and how did you deal with it?) which demonstrate past behavior, which is the best predictor of future success!

I hope some some of this helps you. Good luck and I'd love to know how it goes.

Jaime

leahwun · Jan 19, 2016

Thank you so much for your reply! I just left the interview and I think it went really well. I liked the manager and the feel of the unit. I also think she really liked me. Your advice was helpful and I felt prepared going in. Hoping to get another call soon. I know the process can take a while but I know this company follows up with you even if they don't decide to hire you.