Expert Advice
By Elizabeth Hoppe
By Elizabeth Hoppe
From the very start of his career in medicine, Dr. Don Seidman knew it was going to be pediatrics.
“I had always worked with kids,” he says.
After medical school, he joined a pediatrics practice in Elmhurst that later became DuPage Medical Group, and he has been treating kids and reassuring parents in the Western Suburbs for the 30 years since.
The nature of his day-to-day work has changed very little over the course of three decades, he says. “What we do day in and day out is pretty much the same. People know your practice, they know your name, and you develop individual relationships with children and their parents. The nature of medicine is on those relationships.”
That being said, Dr. Seidman said pediatrics is very much a team sport today—whether it’s doctors in the DuPage Medical Group or in the larger medical world working together to provide the best treatments for families and communities.
In terms of what’s changed in medicine, Dr. Seidman says broad advancements in treating disease has been remarkable. “The success story of immunization and preventative medicine is huge,” he says. The fact that diseases are like polio and meningitis have essentially disappeared except for very rare cases is impressive.
Dr. Seidman knows one of the key parts of his job is building trust with parents and sharing his best advice on how to raise kids to be healthy.
“People have to feel you’re a reliable and trustworthy source of information. As a parent, you want to optimize your child’s development. The best way to do that is to have fun and play with them. Now, there’s a wide variety of different ways to do it. There isn’t a one size fits all. I’m helping people get a sense of what they can do, and show them there’s a wide selection of possible ways to do it,” he says.
As a medical community, pediatricians defer to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control when it comes to best practices, then they apply those guidelines in a way that works for them. Dr. Seidman is the also the pediatric department chair at DuPage Medical Group, so he works to make sure all the pediatricians in the group are working from the same page. “We’ll get together to make sure we’re all being good stewards of antibiotic use, for example. But we also learn from each other. Everyone brings something to the table.”
“The bottom line is as a parent, you’re going to be the expert,” he says. “You know your child better than anyone else knows your child. You’re going to get lots of advice from people, and you have to be the filter of it and take the source of information critically. In today’s world, you need to be more of a critical consumer of information. Don’t believe something just because it’s on social media. If someone is telling you something that seems totally outside the mainstream, chances are good it’s not true.”
As summer approaches, Dr. Seidman reminds parents to be cautious and smart, especially around the pool. “Drowning as a cause of death is much higher than people appreciate. Don’t just trust your kids won’t go near water if they can’t swim. And don’t forget about bicycle helmets. Be a role model; it’s not good enough to just tell your kids to wear a helmet if you’re not doing it yourself.”
Dr. Seidman is starting to see some of those early kids he treated who have turned into grown adults, leaving for college. “It’s amazing how people grow,” he says. “People are bringing their kids to you, and they rely on you to help raise the next generation. It’s a big compliment; and it makes you feel good. I can’t imagine anything else I want to do with my life.”
Dr. Don Seidman treats children with DuPage Medical Group in Hinsdale at 40 South Clay Street or in Elmhurst at 152 N. Addison Avenue in Elmhurst. 630-832-3100, dupagemedicalgroup.com.
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