The pediatrics program at UPMC Shadyside provides exposure to the whole scope of pediatrics required for the practice of family medicine. Four required rotations are dedicated to pediatrics during the residency, and additional electives are also available.
As a PGY-1, our residents spend one month at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh (CHP) on an inpatient team. CHP provides inpatient and emergency care for the majority of children in Pittsburgh and the majority of western Pennsylvania, averaging over 15,000 admissions per year. Our residents care for patients with a huge variety of complaints, ranging from the bread-and-butter to the incredibly rare.
Interns also rotate on an Ambulatory Pediatrics/Newborn rotation. The newborn nursery experience consists of two weeks of daily rounds in the well-baby nurseries at Magee-Women’s Hospital of UPMC, led by a faculty pediatrician from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics. Following morning rounds, residents spend three afternoons per week in the newborn follow-up clinic. The ambulatory portion of this rotation consists of two and one half-days per week for two weeks in a board-certified community pediatrician's office. This ambulatory pediatric experience is supplemented by two half days of clinical ambulatory pediatrics didactics, taught by UPMC Shadyside's faculty pediatrician. Teaching modalities include case discussions, lectures, videos, assigned readings, and self-study modules.
During the second and third years of training, residents spend a total of six weeks in the emergency department at CHP. The hospital averages over 70,000 emergency room visits per year, providing exposure to a wide variety of acute care pediatrics in a busy setting. Our trainees work alongside residents from a variety of disciplines and pediatric emergency medicine fellows and attendings. Before rotating at CHP, residents will complete a Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) course. Finally, our third-year residents also participate in a two-week pediatric urgent care rotation at one of our suburban Express Care sites.
Beyond these four pediatric rotations, pediatric care is embedded in numerous other rotations. One of the joys of residency is delivering a child and then following this child throughout his or her early years of life, and residents spend time seeing children as part of their continuity care at UPMC Shadyside's Family Health Center. Approximately 20% of all patient visits at the Family Health Center are for patients under the age of 15 years. Residents see children for well-child checks, immunizations, chronic medical care, acute complaints, and a variety of other specialty medical examinations. When covering the answering service, resident triage phone calls for our pediatric population. Other required rotations, such as otolaryngology and orthopedics, also have pediatric components.