Kids

So I just started my pediatric surgery rotation. I haven't taken care of kids since the third year of med school....and then it was just kids with RSV...I wasn't actually doing surgery on them. It's kind of crazy actually....first of all I didn't realize how young 16 year olds were. When I was 16 I thought I had everything figured out. But these kids come to the hospital and are totally content to watch cartoons and stuff like that...they still look to their parents for all the answers. Weird. They also do things a lot differently with kids....for instance if I were taking care of an adult I would expect them to be able to take a certain amount of pain and to be responsible enough to get themselves out of bed. But with kids they sedate them for everything and will give then days of coaxing to get them moving. I don't know if the sedation is really for the kid or for the provider truthfully. The kids do a lot of screaming and crying but I really don't think it's due to pain most of the time. I think they are scared out of their little minds. A strange place, strange people, plus they just got hurt and their parents are upset too. I was on call the other night and I had a kid with a 5% superficial burn to his arm and shoulder. Yeah I know it hurt, but it wasn't going to feel better until I debrided it and got a dressing on it. The parents were totally freaked out because now they thought they were terrible parents....of course they weren't....but they didn't see it that way. These accidents happen. You can only be so paranoid and so careful....things happen. Of course trying to tell distraught parents this doesn't really get you anywhere. So I gave the parents a couple options. They could either sit there with their screaming kid (yes we had given him pain meds, we aren't cruel) for 4 hours so I could sedate him. Or we could give a little more pain medicine and go for it. Either way there was going to be screaming and crying. They were pretty reasonable people and just wanted to get stuff done, so I went for it. In an adult this procedure would have taken me 10 minutes tops. But with a squirming, screaming kid it took forever. I think it may have taken 5 years off my own life in the process too. In the end the kid had his dressing on over a burn that was debrided to the best of my ability. There was still screaming and crying....but only when I came back into the room. Good luck bringing him to the doctor any time soon...