What Classes Do I Take to Become a Neonatologist?
- Neonatologists study to become doctors involved with babies' health.cute babies sleeping image by Photoeyes from Fotolia.com
Neonatologists tend to the medical care of sick infants, premature babies and newborns. Neonatologists usually work in neonatal intensive care units, an area of the hospital dedicated to very sick babies, who may stay on the unit for months. To become a neonatologist takes approximately 14 years of higher education, including both undergraduate college and medical school, a pediatric internship and residency and a neonatology fellowship, as well as specific classes in neonatology. - Students learn and perform procedures such as delivery room resuscitation, lumbar punctures, epidemiology, laceration repairs, neonatal intubations, adolescent medicine, rare medical diagnoses, international medicine and injury prevention. Depending on the medical school, students may have elective options such as perinatology, pediatric cardiology or pediatric surgery.
- Neonatology students undergo coursework in general inpatient pediatrics, neonatal transport, emergency medicine, directing patient flow, maternal and child health, neonatal intensive care, newborn nursery, convalescent care, lifestyle medicine, infant psychosocial stress and triaging. Students participate in both classroom learning and real-world experience through simulation laboratories, including neonatal resuscitation, blood gas laboratories, digital imaging readers, isolation rooms, incubators and parent/staff interactions.
- Classes include topics such as behavior and development, bereavement, child advocacy, ethics, risk management, healthcare financing, public health nutrition, spatial epidemiology and teaching other pediatric residents. Some medical schools require students to prepare a scholarly paper or project on a topic of their choosing, to be presented at a medical conference or submitted for grant funding.
- Each medical school conducts its own long-term, ongoing research projects where students may become involved for course credit, such as Cedar-Sinai's studies in neonatal brain development responding to injury, the role of proteoglycans in neonatal brain injury and cardiopulmonary resuscitation in very low birth weight babies.
