The Pediatric Hospital Medicine Fellowship curriculum is structured to support fellows’ academic and research goals. Working with program leadership, fellows develop a schedule that includes required hospital medicine experiences, individualized education and research. Most rotations are two weeks in length, providing continuity with supervising faculty and flexibility to accomplish research goals. Rotations are divided into inpatient, individualized and research experiences, with 16 weeks of each per year.
Inpatient Rotations
Inpatient rotations are supervised by a dedicated group of academic hospitalists who staff all hospital services at Dell Children’s Medical Center and Dell Children’s North. Hospitalists function as primary providers with subspecialists acting as consultants — an ideal structure to learn the practice of hospital medicine.
Inpatient Clinical Rotations
Fellows spend their inpatient clinical time at Dell Children’s Medical Center and Dell Children’s North.
- Dell Children’s Medical Center supports teaching and non-teaching hospitalist services in which fellows practice skills in team leadership, teaching and clinical care for pediatric patients with acute illness and chronic, complex medical issues. Interaction with subspecialists is common at this facility.
- Dell Children’s North focuses on the community experience with fellows caring for children with common acute illness requiring hospitalization.
The inpatient experience is complemented by rotations in palliative care, newborn nursery, sedation and anesthesia, and care of children with medical complexity.
Individualized Curriculum
The individualized curriculum is tailored to each fellow’s interests and professional goals with opportunities in all the pediatric subspecialties, leadership and hospital management, advocacy, and medical education. Additionally, fellows can design their own experiences with the assistance of program leadership and faculty mentors. Examples of fellow-developed experiences include pediatric nutrition and culinary medicine, pediatric IV access, respiratory therapy exposure and simulation.
Research
Research curriculum includes longitudinal didactics in biostatistics and quality improvement led by pediatrics fellowship faculty. Each fellow completes a primary project during fellowship with the support of a primary hospitalist faculty mentor and scholarly oversight committee. The program utilizes a broad definition of research with support for projects in clinical medicine, medical education, quality improvement, advocacy and basic sciences.
Didactics
The fellowship’s curriculum includes access to a wide array of didactic experiences and faculty development offerings from the program, the pediatrics department and medical school, and the national Pediatric Hospital Medicine community. In addition to monthly didactics, quarterly career club and works-in-progress research sessions, Pediatric Hospital Medicine fellows join all fellows quarterly in Fellows College to explore topics and professional development common across all fellowships.