Session 60 Dr. Taylor Inman is an academic Pediatric Pulmonologist who is also a locums physician. She has been one and a half years out of fellowship training. We discussed her path into the specialty, what it's like, and much more. Check out MedEd Media for more podcasts. If you have some premed friends, kindly tell them about The Premed Years Podcast. If you have suggestions who would make a great guest on the show, please email me at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net. [01:20] Interest in Pediatric Pulmonology Taylor realized she wanted to be a pediatric pulmonologist when she got to her second year of residency. She always knew she wanted to get into medicine at a young age, having had Type I diabetes and getting diagnosed at five years old. She has been exposed to medicine at a young age with her mom being a nurse and her dad having a PhD. So always knew she was going to do something in medicine. Then when she got into pediatrics residency, she knew wanted to specialize. She likes interesting kids and she's been trying to figure out which interests her and pulmonology just fit the bill. [03:27] Traits that Lead to Being a Good Pediatric Pulmonologist Taylor describes that one of the traits that lead to become a good pediatric pulmonologist is being able to pay attention to details. Especially in pulmonology, there are a lot of details that you have to tease about patients to help optimize their treatment. Another trait that can be a hard thing to learn is the ability to listen to families. Working together is important to figure out a plan. this being said, building long term relationships with patients and their families is very important. "You need to listen to the parents who take care of the kids because a lot of times, they do know more than you do about their child's condition." [04:23] Being a Locums Physician in an Academic Setting Taylor says she actually fell upon her practice as a locums physician by chance. She trained in San Diego and her husband's family is in Las Vegas, where they moved after her training since at that time, they had a 22-month-old and a 3-month-old. She wanted a break so they needed to live somewhere where the cost of living was lower. Her plan was to take six months off, study for boards, take boards, and then start working locally. Only to discover that it wasn't as easy as she thought it would be to get a job locally in a pediatric subspecialty. Then she found the locums position in Fresno, California where they're desperate for a pediatric subspecialist. They have a huge pediatric hospital with over 300 beds so they needed help with their inpatient service. So Taylor travels to Fresno one week at a time where she gets on-call and does rounds. They pay for her rental car and her hotel. And she finds having a work-life balance and she's been doing this for about eight months now. So she works one week, and then have three weeks off to be home with the kids. The hospital she's working at started their own pediatric residency only this year. They have residents rotating through. They can do a pulmonology elective and they can have residents covering some of their CF (cystic fibrosis) patients. But for the most part, most of the patients in the hospital are taken care of mainly by attending physicians along with the resident service. So it's nice to have that balance of residents covering for them at night. [07:10] Types of Patients and Primary versus Consulting Majority of their patients have cystic fibrosis. They do see a lot of asthma patients as well as chronic patients. They have a separate service for all the chronically ill patients and they do consult on them. When she trained back in San Diego, they were oftentimes the primary physician for these patients although they're dealing with multi-system problems. Other cases are patients with pneumonia, embolism-type stuff, and TB, bronch patients. As a primary physician, you're in charge of everything - feeding, breathing, medications, discharge