Pediatric Psychiatrist
Diagnosed in elementary school with a learning disability, he persisted with supportive teachers to achieve his goal of being “a doctor for kids.”
FAMILY BACKGROUND
NT was the youngest of four children. His father was a teacher. His mother was a home interior decorator.
CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS OF AN ADULT CAREER
NT was an occasional babysitter within the family’s neighborhood and later worked at a swimming pool as a lifeguard, so he was comfortable around younger children. His pediatrician was kind, not scary, so early on NT thought about becoming “a doctor for kids.”
HIGH SCHOOL
NT was diagnosed during elementary school with a mild “learning disability” due to his reading and writing skills being below the level of his classmates. His public school provided occasional sessions of working with reading teachers to improve NT’s skills. To supplement those efforts, NT’s parents engaged a tutor to assist NT’s ability to improve his reading comprehension and his writing skills.
COLLEGE
Editor’s note – Finding the right college for a student who learns differently can be a challenging and often overwhelming process since each student has individual priorities and needs. Some colleges supplement their regular curriculum to offer specialized courses in reading comprehension, as add-on services. A few colleges are dedicated exclusively to students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). An on-line search for “Colleges for learning disabilities” plus discussions with school guidance counselors will yield much helpful information.
NT’s high school transcript was submitted to several colleges, along with letters of recommendation from his high school teachers and his tutor. Admissions personnel at each college closely reviewed his applications, interviewed NT when he toured their campus and ultimately NT was offered admission to each of the colleges to which he had applied.
During school vacation summers, NT worked as a lifeguard at his community’s swimming pool but his most significant experience occurred when his former pediatrician invited NT to observe actual pediatric patient exams when the parents of the child, to whom the pediatrician had explained NT’s career goal – working with children within the medical field – and learning disability history, agreed to let NT join them in the exam room. (NT agreed to just observe and to maintain patient confidentiality.)
MEDICAL SCHOOL
Editor’s note – It is commendable when schools at any level, from elementary through college, are able to respond to a student’s need to learn differently. If the effort is less than fully successful, there is no harm to anyone. But while a medical school could similarly offer to provide learning skills in a process unique to an individual, the result of the process – the ability of the new physician to adequately diagnose and treat patients – must reach a minimal level of competence or innocent patients would be harmed by receiving less than the required standard of medical care for either diagnosis or treatment or both.
In the case of NT, the admissions personnel for the medical school from which NT’s pediatrician had graduated decades ago, closely reviewed NT’s college course grades, his letters of recommendation from college professors and from his pediatrician mentor and then interviewed NT. Following deliberation, NT was accepted for enrollment.
MEDICAL RESIDENCY
As part of the regular medical school curriculum, NT was exposed to various types of medical practice but none of them interested NT more than the chance to work with children as a pediatrician. Accordingly, NT applied to several pediatric residency programs and was matched to one hospital’s in-patient pediatric clinic.
NT recognized and appreciated the influence of his mentor to help push his medical school application across the finish line. He thought that the best way to thank his mentor was to work hard, graduate and become a successful pediatrician. Unfortunately, NT’s residency assignment led to his being supervised by a senior pediatrician who was constantly critical of NT’s differently-abled learning skills and judgment, which led NT to reconsideration of his medical specialty. After discussion with his early mentor plus medical school advisers, professors of child psychiatry and several child psychiatrists, NT decided the best fit for himself, and his future patients was to refocus his medical education toward psychiatry with an emphasis on children.
(Editor’s note – If the student who hopes to work within a complex career (such as an engineer, a physician or a scientist) has no known adult mentor to help push an application through the college or grad school admission process, the student could volunteer to intern in a setting of the wished-for career path, learn by observing and gradually helping out, possibly leading to being ‘adopted’ by a mentor who might assist the volunteer through the college / grad school admission process. In other words: if you don’t have a readily available, friendly mentor, work to find one and earn their support!)
FIRST ADULT CAREER JOB
NT’s change of medical specialty focus delayed but did not derail his eventual graduation from medical school and passing the relevant licensing exam.
Having experienced – during his child psychiatry residency – both a hospital in-patient setting in contrast to an individual psychiatrist’s office setting, NT believed he would be more comfortable being able to spend time with young patients in a quiet office setting, instead of within the hustle and bustle of a hospital. Accordingly, he surveyed job openings for newly licensed child psychiatrists in private practice, secured several personal interviews and was hired for his first full-time position as a child psychiatrist.
The first thing that NT did on his first day at his new psychiatrist’s group office was to have a photograph taken of himself within the group of his physician co-workers, which he sent to his parents, to his first physician mentor, to everyone who wrote letters of recommendation to his college or to his medical school and last but not least, to all his supportive early school teachers and tutors as thanks for all their support and encouragement.
CAREER SATISFACTION
Now more than a decade into private practice as a full-time child psychiatrist, NT takes pride in many aspects of his career:
* accepting the challenge of learning a different way, including some elementary school bullying for “being different”
* bringing calmness into every young patient’s session, thus reassuring both the child and their parent(s)
* constant devotion to keeping up with all the advances of psychiatric care for children, including attendance at seminars (in-person and on-line) to assure himself that his thinking process yields the same results as his peers
* developing an understanding of how to function as a business partner within his professional peer group: treat others fairly while protecting your own financial interests
