Residency Program

Curriculum

The Schneider Children's Hospital Residency Program is designed to prepare candidates to meet the demands of private practice or, with specialized training, to enter a specialty area in a private or academic setting. The course of instruction and clinical experience is based upon progressively increasing responsibility for the management of patients. The daily didactic program consists of morning report, clinical rounds and noon lectures by program directors, full-time faculty and attending pediatricians. Sub-speciality conferences and lectures, multi-disciplinary teleconferences, Grand Rounds, Morbidity and Mortality conference, Journal Club and systematic training in the preparation for Pediatric Board examinations are integrated into the daily schedule.

The strong emphasis on academic and clinical skills is further enhanced by resident participation in pediatric research. All house officers have the opportunity to work with a research mentor of their choice and many present their project at Grand Rounds. Many residents have gone on to present their research at regional or national conferences, and to publish their work in peer-reviewed pediatric journals.

Enhanced Primary Care Experience

Our program is committed to providing residents with the extensive and intensive training in primary care pediatrics that is the foundation for the effective care of all children and their families. Residents are taught to develop specific knowledge, skills and attitudes in order to understand and manage the primary care problems and needs of children and families. Our program provides enhanced experiences in primary and continuity care, and urban health care for children and their parents, including the underserved population.

Entering residents are offered the option of two different types of Continuity Clinic experiences: First, they may choose the hospital based clinic under the direct supervision of full-time SCH staff general pediatricians; Or, they may choose to be placed in one of the carefully selected private practice sites in our Private Pediatricians Residents Education Program (PPREP), with one designated practicing Pediatrician as their mentor for three years: For more details, see the "Pediatric Ambulatory Experience" section below.
Residents may elect in their second and third year of training to have a full day of continuity clinic. In addition residents may elect to spend a four week "block" rotation in a general pediatric ambulatory practice or in a pediatric "private practice" in order to experience the full work day responsibilities of the office pediatrician.

The After-Hours Telephone Triage service provides residents with experience in telephone triage and advice to patients and their parents. Exposure to telephone triage medicine provides residents with the essential skills and experience needed to prepare them for one of the most demanding responsibilities in primary care practice. Caring for patients over the phone requires skills vastly different from those used in a face-to-face patient encounter. As much of physicians' time is spent communicating with patients and families during and after office hours, resident training experience in telephone triage is an essential clinical preparation.
Complementary Clinical Experiences

Senior residents may rotate for one month during their training to a community hospital affiliate (South Nassau Community Hospital). This rotation provides residents with the opportunity to learn how to handle having primary responsibility for the secondary care patients in a community hospital setting, and how to manage the challenges of triaging such patients. Through this experience residents also develop an understanding of the multidimensional needs of an underserved population that crosses racial, ethnic and cultural lines.
During an "Advocacy" rotation, residents provide primary care to an underserved population in Hempstead, NY through our Mobile Van System. The Mobile Van reaches out to children and their families who do not have access to medical care, providing them with a Medical Home in their own community. Time is also spent providing parent and child education at local homeless shelters, public service programs and in schools.

Many senior residents choose an International Elective during their third year. This allows residents to complement their basic pediatric training with very specialized experiences in areas of special interest. As always, the Program does everything possible to custom-tailor each resident's opportunities to develop their individual interests and goals. Residents recently have chosen electives in South Africa, India, Australia and Tanzania.

Graduates have successfully obtained superior private practice and hospital-based positions in the geographic areas of their choice. Career counseling and job placement services are provided to residents by our full-time and voluntary faculty.

Pre-Fellowship Training

Fellowship programs are offered by 13 of the divisions in the Department of Pediatrics at the Children's Hospital. Because of the size of the Children's Hospital, most of those programs have a large number of sub-speciality faculty, who provide a comprehensive range of expertises and the critical mass necessary to stimulate the decision-making skills of the residents.

Residents have the opportunity to elect 4 week block rotations in the sub-specialties of their choice, during which they are instructed in the "Core Curriculum" designed by the faculty to provide them with the training in the most common issues confronted in each field. In addition, residents who plan to go on to Fellowship training, may choose a specific Mentor in that field at any time during residency. They also have the opportunity to pair up with a sub-specialty pediatrician on an on-going research project, or one of their own choosing. Finally, pre-Fellowship residents may choose to spend one-half day per week during 2nd and 3rd year in a subspeciality clinic, in order to expand their knowledge of the field, and to enhance their credentials for applying to a fellowship program.

Residents seeking subspecialty training have been very successful in securing positions in the sub-specialty program of their choice, either at the Children's Hospital or at institutions both locally and nationally, such as Boston Children's, L.A. Children's and CHOP, as well as the leading NYC academic centers.

Shomer Shabbos - SCH may accept up to two applicants per year who need to have their schedules arranged so they can observe the Sabbath and Holy Days of the Jewish year.