A child specialist has to diagnose and treat children of all ages ranging from infants to toddlers and beyond. There is real difficulty in treating infants since they can’t express themselves at all. However, older children too can’t often express themselves coherently. So, the job is cut out for a child specialist. He or she has to elicit some kind of response from the child about its sufferings. Then he has to correlate it with the symptoms expressed by the parents and his own physical examination findings. So, the job is difficult. A child specialist has to correlate several bits of information and diagnose the problem. On the other hand,they also need to be careful about prescribing some diagnostic tests.
A considerate, experienced and good child specialist will never prescribe diagnostic tests like MRI, CT scan and X-Ray, unless these are absolutely required. It is believed that children who are exposed to x-rays, MRIs, CT scans at very tender age may develop life threatening diseases complications later in life. They may develop illnesses, which may become difficult to treat. However, routine tests like blood, urine or stool test needed to ascertain the problem.
It does send shivers down the spine of a parent when they find out that their kid has gone on to become a victim of any life-threatening illness. What is more confusing is that many kids go on to spend an extra amount of time in the hospital as well. While being in the setting of a hospital is more than ideal,what these child specialists is that they go on to provide a positive outlook to the whole scheme of things.
Their main aim is to reduce the anxiety along with stress which the kids go on to experience in a hospital setting and they aim to provide an understanding to the kids, and the parents of what is happening. They have the necessary amount of skills and the counselling background needed to impart the much-needed skills.
Various kind of Child Specialists
There are different kinds of Child Specialist depending on the area of specialization. So there is neonatologist, medicine, pediatric cardiologist, pediatric nephrologist, pediatric neurosurgeon, pediatric neurologist, hematologist, oncologist, gastroenterologist, pulmonologist, endocrinologist, ophthalmologist etc. Then there are specialists like audiologist and speech therapist. A child specialist needs to undergo further training to develop as a specialist.
Qualities of a good child specialist
First of all, good child specialists need to have compassionate personality and suave communication skill with children. They also need to have good observational skill. The purpose is to make children feel free and open up about its problems. This helps the doctor in diagnosis.
Pediatric dentistry
Children often suffer from dental problems like tooth decay, teeth cavities, tooth loss etc. For such problems, there may be several reasons such as the habit of tongue thrusting and thumb sucking or intake of excessive amounts of sugary foods such as chocolates. Whatever be the reason such dental problems need to be sorted out in early childhood otherwise the child may have to live with deformed or ill formed teeth. So, if there is any such issue, you should visit a pediatric dentist. He or she may prescribe dental bridges, implants, crown or brace depending on the problem.
