Residency is all about education. The three years of pediatric residency training represents the most concentrated opportunity for a young pediatrician to learn their selected field. While the development of a complete pediatrician requires life long learning and development, never again in your career will you be surrounded by such a large concentration of educational opportunities. You learn from your colleagues, from your patients, from your students, from your faculty mentors and from yourself.

DIDACTIC CONFERENCES AND EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES:

Morning report takes place at Children’s Hospital each weekday morning. This conference, managed by the chief residents with faculty involvement, reviews patients admitted to the hospital in the previous day. Because of the large service area of our children’s hospital, residents at this program see both bread and butter pediatrics, as well as many rare medical diagnoses.  Cases are selected for resident educational value. In addition, board review questions in the form of "Questions of the Day" are presented at each morning report session.

Resident noon conference takes place daily (Monday-Wednesday). This traditional, didactic lecture series is designed by the faculty and residents to encompass the key components of pediatric knowledge delivered over a recurring 18 month lecture cycle. Lectures are designed to provide the didactic framework of the six core educational competencies (Patient Care, Medical Knowledge, Professionalism, Systems Based Practice, Practice Based Learning and Improvement and Interpersonal and Communication Skills). Each specialty of pediatric takes part in this series. In addition, such topics as professionalism, ethics case reports, risk management, child advocacy, international medicine, health care financing, and quality improvement introduce residents to topics they will deal with in their post-residency careers. You may download a list of all the topics here.

Pediatric Grand Rounds is held each Thursday and provides the opportunity to hear local, national and international experts discuss a wide array of pediatric topics. The list of topics may be downloaded here. Lunch is provided for all noon educational conferences.

Self-directed learning modules are increasingly finding use in our technology-driven educational arena. Current modules, available at all times on our resident educational website (Pedsportal) currently include a procedural skills module, a pediatric pain module, adolescent care modules and a quality improvement module.

A wide array of other educational activities include: journal club, injury prevention modules in emergency medicine, mock code reviews, patient advocacy instruction, statistics and a wide array of educational sessions available during monthly subspecialty rotations.

The American Board of Pediatrics "In-Training Examination" is offered free of charge to all residents each year of training to allow the individual resident to track their progress in preparing for board certification.

Individual resident progress if monitored via individual meetings with the program director at least twice a year. In these semi-annual meetings, resident educational accomplishments, procedural skill acquisition and performance are reviewed and individualized learning plans are formulated by the resident and program director.