What's the difference between a general and a developmental paediatrician?
General paediatricians can treat (or are involved in the care of) most medical and developmental problems in children; it’s a skillset in itself to have to be across such a wide range of medical problems as well as behaviour and development. Over time, referrals to general paediatrics have increasingly become about developmental, behavioural or mental health concerns in children, so that they now make up the vast majority of referrals to paediatric practices.
It takes time to learn the skills to deal with these often complex problems that don’t have simple treatment pathways in the way that many medical issues do, like asthma for example. All paediatricians have to undertake training now in community or developmental paediatrics for six months but in the specialist pathway we do years of training in this area. In my professional development I only focus on continuing to build these skills.
