Pediatrics Infectious Disease Clinic

            I attend the pediatrics outpatient infectious disease clinic every Tuesday and Friday mornings from 9 AM – 12 PM. This clinic consists of a doctor, 1 or 2 nurses, a 7^th year medical intern, and a pharmacy resident. NTUH has a recently started master of pharmacy program that allows pharmacists to pursue additional clinical experience in the hospital and do more research.

            Usually patients have to schedule an appointment with the doctor before the day of clinic. Spaces often fill up quickly so patients are advised to make an appointment several days in advance. Because of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance, anyone can make an appointment to see the doctor. As you can imagine, the patient load for the day can be very large. On average, we see ~35-40 patients in a 3 hour span. That’s roughly 5 minutes for each patient encounter!  When the patient first comes in, he/she will give his/her National Health Insurance card to either the nurse or the medical intern, who will then place the card on a special machine that will open up the patient’s file. This is a very nice way to centralize all of the patient data. The doctor will then assess the patient’s symptoms and make an appropriate diagnosis.  Once the doctor has decided on a treatment plan, he/she will write down the prescription and give it to the nurse or medical intern to input the medication into the computer and have it ready for the patient in the outpatient pharmacy. Unfortunately, the pharmacy resident is only allowed to observe.

            It has definitely been interesting seeing the illnesses that the pediatric population presents with.  For one thing, it almost seems like everyone has some sort of allergy. With my doctor, he commonly prescribes the antihistamine cetirizine. From my understanding, patients prefer to have the doctor tell them what medication they should take, even if the medication is available OTC. Because of this, the doctor will write a prescription for almost all OTC medications such as acetaminophen and ibuprofen.

            Another common illness that I saw was roseola, which is a viral infection that commonly infects infants and young children. It is most common in children ages 6 months – 1 year. This viral infection is caused by the human herpesvirus 6. Common symptoms that patients present with include a runny nose, sore throat, intermittent high fevers, and a pinkish colored rash that spreads throughout the body once the fevers subside. There is no specific treatment for roseola and symptomatic relief is often used such as acetaminophen to lower the fever. 

A view of the pediatrics ID clinic. 

The examination bed for the children