James talks to Dr Chris Elliot and Dr Kylie Yates about assessing and treating paediatric patients.
Summary Writer: Emily Nash
Editor: Chris Elliot
Interviewee: Chris Elliot and Kylie Yates
Chris Elliot is a Consultant Paediatrician who works in a teaching hospital in Sydney and in private rooms. As well as clinical Medicine he is enthusiastic about health communication and teaching. Chris is a Conjoint Lecturer for the University of New South Wales and writes the occasional article on child health for mainstream media. He also teaches Advanced Paediatric Life Support and sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health. Chris completed his Internship at Bankstown Hospital and Paediatric training through the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network. On the days when he is not at work he enjoys playing with his children, and also when they play by themselves.
Kylie Yates is a staff specialist general Paediatrician at St George Hospital. She is an APLS instructor and co-developer of their Paediatric units simulation based training programme. Kylie is enthusiastic about introducing new ideas to hospital practice but still thinks talking to families is the best bit of the job. She graduated from the University of Sydney and was trained in Paediatrics at Children’s Hospital Westmead.
With Dr Chris Elliot and Dr Kylie Yates, Consultant Paediatricians at teaching hospitals in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Assessing paediatric patients is a daunting task for doctors, especially for junior doctors. Children are not just small adults, and therefore a different approach is needed when assessing and treating them.
Children are physically smaller, sustain different types of injuries, require different drug doses, are physiologically different, get illnesses that don’t tend to occur in adults such as bronchiolitis and croup and are psychologically different. This podcast teaches junior doctors a ‘bag of tricks’ to enable them to examine children, get on their level and deal with the fear and uncertainty that children have in unfamiliar environments in order to have a really positive experience when assessing children. This podcast should be accessed in conjunction with Dr Arjun Rao’s Podcast “The approach to a sick child”
A 2-year-old girl has been brought to the Emergency Department by her father with a 3-day history of cough, runny nose and fevers. She is off her food and passing less urine than normal. Her father is anxious about what might be wrong.
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