What to look for in a pediatrician

MagicToaster

Hey guys!

My wife is having a baby in a month. We’ve been running around getting everything ready, and we’re at the point where we need a pediatrician. We have a temporary one, suggested to us by our gynecologist to check the baby after she’s born and he seems nice enough, but we really have nothing to compare him with.

I’d like to take some time this week to start looking for other alternatives, but this is our first experience of this sort. What should I look for in a pediatrician? Any advice and life experiences will be greatly appreciated.

Sir Carcass

They're all going to be competent, for the most part. What my wife and I did was just looked through the website to find a few that looked nice, then met each of them separately and decided from there. You could try something like Angie's List, if they do doctors, or find one that does. But for the most part, just meet a few and pick the one you like the best.

Djeet

Like any medical provider I think word of mouth is your best resource; ask family, friends and work colleagues with kids. Assuming you trust your OB/GYN, I'd think his/her rec should be good. Elsewise I'd make sure to get someone young enough to see your kid (and any possible future kids) through til they're 18.

mts

yea, ask your OBGYN and if you know anyone with young kids ask them. a lot of offices also have meet the doctor type days. also can't hurt to make a post on here or babycenter.com to get recommendations in the area you live in.

we basically asked coworkers and my wife on babycenter and made a shortlist. then went to the office websites and based on office hours and policies made the choice for our 1 month guy now. though i wouldn't worry too much, you are not tied in to a doctor if you don't like them.

for us the deciding factor was their policy on vaccinations, hours open and that they will always get you in same day, plus they have a sick and healthy waiting rooms so less worries about bringing him in for normal checkup stuff and not have him sitting next to a kid with a nasty bug.

MagicToaster

mts wrote:

sick and healthy waiting rooms so less worries about bringing him in for normal checkup stuff and not have him sitting next to a kid with a nasty bug.

This is gold!

Peen

Also things like whether they have Saturday hours, how they schedule visits (our pediatrician has blocks of time where they schedule only infants during flu season to try to minimize infections for the little guys), and whether they're affiliated with any local hospitals (in case you need any kind of specialist) are things to think about.

lordrel

A lot of it just comes down to "fit" as well. I run an eight provider pediatric practice. I could name patients for each of our docs that love them, and patients for each that hate them. It's rarely universal. You want a doc that works with you to treat your child, not one that just treats their symptoms. Sometimes the only way to find out if you like one is to make an appointment. Don't be afraid to go somewhere else if you don't like anything about them, the office, or the support staff (assuming your insurance doesn't make it too difficult).

I don't know how universal it is, but our offices offer a free "get to know your doctor" appointment prior to the child's birth. This lets you meet the doc and prepare for what happens next, without the stress of the child already being there. You may want to check around and see if any in your area offer the same thing.

etdragon

I was going to suggest trying to find a practice with multiple docs. Our practice is kind of big with like 7 doctors total but because of that we've been able to find one or two we really really like (and our son doesn't scream at). When he's sick I honestly don't give a shit who I see but for well visits I like certain pediatricians because of their point of view.

Just remember if you pick a practice and end up hating it you can always just leave and go to a different one. We found ours by looking at practices close to our house and sitting down with one or two of the doctors for 15 minutes to ask some questions. We did this while I was still pregnant and the docs were very open to scheduling a time to meet with us.

mts

in a slightly unrelated note, make sure your hospital bag is packed now. our guy showed up 3 weeks early and we didn't have anything ready

etdragon

mts wrote:

in a slightly unrelated note, make sure your hospital bag is packed now. our guy showed up 3 weeks early and we didn't have anything ready

Was he your first? My first was 8 days early. Firsts being early apparently isn't common.

Pregnant with our second now. We'll see what she decides to do.

mts

yep our first. he is 1 month old today. yea it isn't very common at all. on top of being early, he only took about 2.5 hrs from water breaking to delivery.

Djeet

If you (as father) don't already have a Primary Care Physician, you may want to consider taking yourself and your new kid to a family practitioner (family medicine, or general practitioner, as it's called different things in diffeent places). I'm quite happy with the pediatrician for my kids, though I'm not too attached cause as often as not the kids are seen by some doctor other than who's the named pediatrician. I fell ill without having a PCP and the illness had to progress quite a bit before I finally saw a doctor who had admitting privileges to a hospital so as to check me in. Advantage I could see to a family practice is you'll have your history as well as your kids all at one place and you'll both go to same place for check ups and whatnot.

DrAllecon

Already a lot of good advice. I would just reinforce that you're not married to your pediatrician, and that often one can sound great on paper, be recommended by friends, but can just happen to rub you the wrong way, or his/her bedside manner is not what you were comfortable with. (Try not to sign up for House, MD unless you kid's REALLY sick past more than 2 commercial breaks)

Congratulations! I'm sure you'll find someone good, just don't be afraid to go to a different one if you're uncomfortable with the first one you try.

mts

one more thing to add. Pick someone who doesn't make you feel bad about asking dumb worried new parent questions.

Our little guy was throwing up a lot after feeding.we brought it up thinking it was just reflux. Our doctor had us go get ultrasound to rule out pyloric stenosis.turns out our little man had it and I am typing this on my phone at the hospital after he went through surgery to fix it.

MagicToaster

All your advice is great! Thanks for the input guys!

As for the hospital bag, it's been ready for a while! We're just counting down the days!

TheCanMan

There were basically 3 major factors that lead us to pick our pediatrician. It was a large practice, so with more than a handful of doctors it's easy to get an appointment on short notice. They had separate sick and well waiting rooms. And probably most importantly, they are closely associated with the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (we're in Jersey) so during off hours our phone calls are sent to the nurses' station at CHOP which is about as much piece of mind as I could have hoped for.

It's not something we immediately thought of, but definitely ask what their off-hours policy is. We've made a couple late night calls in the first 2 years so far.

etdragon

TheCanMan wrote:

There were basically 3 major factors that lead us to pick our pediatrician. It was a large practice, so with more than a handful of doctors it's easy to get an appointment on short notice. They had separate sick and well waiting rooms. And probably most importantly, they are closely associated with the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (we're in Jersey) so during off hours our phone calls are sent to the nurses' station at CHOP which is about as much piece of mind as I could have hoped for.

It's not something we immediately thought of, but definitely ask what their off-hours policy is. We've made a couple late night calls in the first 2 years so far.

Yeah I agree with asking about the off hours policy. Our office forwards calls to a triage nurse and they are pretty good at helping out. At the very least they will tell us when it's necessary to go see someone even it means going to the ER.

Also, TheCanMan you very likely live in my neck of the woods. I'm in South Jersey, just over the Betsy Ross Bridge from Philly. We actually are associated with Cooper Hospital through our pediatrician but I can be referred to CHOP under certain circumstances which puts my mind at ease.

illirica

Spend some time thinking about what you want to be as a parent. Find a pediatrician who will help you with those goals. For example, if you intend to breastfeed your baby, make sure your pediatrician is on board with that and up to date with the weight charts and so on (breastfed and formula fed babies gain weight at different rates, sometimes causing confusion). Talk to your significant other about what your parenting style is going to be - where is the baby going to sleep, what is the baby going to eat, when do you want to start solids (and how do you want to go about that), and so on. Talk to your pediatrician about all of these things. You really want to see eye-to-eye with your pediatrician on the day to day stuff so that you don't have to worry about pediatricians pushing you to do things you see as unnecessary or undesirable - this will just lead to friction and make it more difficult to focus on other issues that may come up.

etdragon

illirica wrote:

Spend some time thinking about what you want to be as a parent. Find a pediatrician who will help you with those goals. For example, if you intend to breastfeed your baby, make sure your pediatrician is on board with that and up to date with the weight charts and so on (breastfed and formula fed babies gain weight at different rates, sometimes causing confusion). Talk to your significant other about what your parenting style is going to be - where is the baby going to sleep, what is the baby going to eat, when do you want to start solids (and how do you want to go about that), and so on. Talk to your pediatrician about all of these things. You really want to see eye-to-eye with your pediatrician on the day to day stuff so that you don't have to worry about pediatricians pushing you to do things you see as unnecessary or undesirable - this will just lead to friction and make it more difficult to focus on other issues that may come up.

I like this advice but I want to note here that nothing you choose now with regards to parenting style/choices should ever be set in stone. The more you are prepared for things to change, not work out, or not suite you, the better off you will be.

That's kind of why practices with multiple doctors work out well. If you change your mind about something there will likely be a doctor who sees eye to eye with you no matter what your opinion is or how much things change.

Beck

Make sure your Dr.'s receptionist is awesome. Someone that you can call and talk to beside your doctor who's knowledgeable, kind, and helpful, is extremely useful. I spend a lot of time at doctors, and my experience is that the best doctors have fantastic receptionists.

Blake T

wrong thread