Fall is upon us and that means we have just wrapped up the best time of the year. Summer in Minnesota is my favorite season and July 4th is always a highlight. I was thinking about how much I enjoy fireworks and thinking about how they are so representative of what we do in pediatrics.
Fireworks often originate on some mysterious barge out on a darkened lake, streaking upward to explode into a dazzling display of twinkling lights. Sometimes they even form shapes or smiley faces. Who could imagine something could undergo such an amazing transformation? Pediatricians can.
Pediatricians handle special cargo all the time. Some of our “packages” can go off without warning, melting down into a full-blown tantrum right before our eyes. Pediatricians know we need to do our work with special care.
Every child exam begins not with the “business at hand” but rather an attempt to establish some commonality. Either commiserating with the exhausted parents of a newborn to talking about the latest animated phenomenon (Bluey, anyone?), pediatricians strive to make a connection with our patients and their families. We know it is important to not just be able to get through the current visit but to establish goodwill for the next encounter.
Pediatrics is the long game. Each visit builds on the relationship between child and pediatrician so that from time-to-time, a previously sickly toddler or a child who has survived cancer treatment comes in for a camp physical or pre-college form completion and you think to yourself, “that is amazing.” Because like a good firework display, it is.
Eileen Crespo, MD, FAAP, began her two-year term as MNAAP president in July 2022. Dr. Crespo practices at Hennepin Healthcare and is the vice president of medical services at Delta Dental.
