DO - Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine

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From Diapers to
Driver’s Licenses
by Melissa Rake Calhoun
More and more graduates are choosing
pediatrics. What’s accelerating the
march to this specialty?
Hint: It’s not the money.
Mazen Abbas, D.O. (‘03), first felt the pull toward pediatric practice when he began treating a little
girl with complicated pnemonia, and she surprised him. When she recovered beautifully, Abbas couldn’t
get over the feeling he carried with him in the days after her release from Dewitt Army Community
Hospital in Fort Belvoir, Va.
“We took a three-year-old who looked absolutely miserable and scared, and made her happy and playful
in one intervention,” Abbas says. “I remember specifically that’s the moment I went home and thought,
‘I can’t wait to go to work tomorrow morning.’”
That was more than two years ago. Now, Abbas is a pediatric resident and Army captain at Tripler
Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. He says he went into pediatrics because it provides an
incredibly satisfying level of reward.
Abbas’ story is not uncommon. Across the nation, an increasing number of medical graduates are choosing
pediatrics as their practice focus. What’s more, in Abbas’ 2003 graduating class, 10 percent of graduates
chose pediatrics–the highest percentage of a single class in OU-COM’s history.
The number of general pediatricians nationally has grown from just over 22,000 in 1975 to nearly 70,000
in 2003, according to the most recent statistics provided by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Much
of the growth has taken place since 1990, representing a 67 percent increase, and is associated with the
crest in primary care popularity beginning in the mid-1990s.
A more marked shift has been taking place in the past decade among osteopathic graduates. Since
1995, the number of osteopathic residents training in pediatrics has increased by 99 percent,
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