Course Director: Constance McAneney, MD
Course Associate Director: Murray Passo, MD
Medical Student Coordinator: Joyce Salter
Pediatrics is a specialty of medicine dealing with the physical, mental, and psychosocial health of infants, children, and adolescents. The third year clerkship is an eight week program designed to present the fundamentals of pediatrics which should be mastered by any physician, as well as to provide a sound foundation for those choosing to enter the specialty.
The faculty of the Department of Pediatrics is committed to an educational experience designed for adult learners. The focus of this experience is the curriculum. This curriculum, adapted by our faculty from one developed by the Council on Medical Student Education in Pediatrics, includes a series of competencies. The primary expectation of this clerkship is achievement of these competencies. During the course of the next two months, we expect you to refer frequently to these competencies, documenting which ones you achieve with the specific patient encounter. We are offering you, as adult learners, a variety of ways to achieve these expectations.
Textbook. You will be supplied with rental copies of the current edition of Rudolph’s Pediatrics. Bellet’s The Diagnostic Approach to Symptoms and Signs in Pediatrics is also available to the students but is limited in supply.
Formal teaching. With the exception of some orientation sessions on the first day, there are no formal lectures in this clerkship. We consider lectures as an outmoded teaching style, and have opted for a variety of other formal teaching sessions.
Preceptorials. During the inpatient month of the clerkship, you will be assigned to a small group with a faculty preceptor. These meetings will occur two times a week, lasting about an hour and a half. A fourth meeting will occur weekly with a neonatal preceptor. The preceptorials will be case-based learning exercises. They will center on a series of brief clinical vignettes, with which you will be supplied. These cases have been carefully developed, such that they deal with all of the competency expectations in the curriculum. Before each session, your preceptor will assign several of these cases for preparation. As any physician being confronted with a clinical problem, you are expected to use your text and any other resources available to you to develop a strategy for diagnosis and therapy. The preceptorial will be an interactive session between students and preceptor, dealing with the assigned cases. Your participation in and preparation for these sessions will be an important component of your grade in the clerkship.
Clinical Skills Lab.Two Friday afternoons during the inpatient month of the clerkship, students will attend a clinical skills lab with senior faculty. These sessions will be aimed at honing your clinical and procedural skills.
Ethics. There will one Ethics session led by Dr. Christine McHenry that will occur during your inpatient rotation. This session will be case based and all students are expected to attend and participate.
CLIPP Cases. You will be required to complete computerized learning cases during you clerkship. This will count for a portion of your grade. These cases illustrate patients with disease entities that you may not come across during your rotation but are essential to understanding Pediatrics.
Other CCHMC teaching exercises. As a major teaching hospital, CCHMC offers a wide variety of formal teaching exercises every day. Students are welcome to attend any of these sessions, commensurate with their other responsibilities. Participation in some sessions, such as morning report or x-ray conferences, will be an expectation of specific parts of the clerkship.
Clinical experience. About half of the clerkship will be devoted to an inpatient experience at CHMC, while the other half will be based in various ambulatory settings in the tri-State. Additionally, a newborn medicine experience will be incorporated into both. In each of these settings, students will be expected to become active participants in patient care activities, and to supplement this activity with self-directed reading.
Patient Contact Log. It is required by the LCME to track patient contact. You have been provided with Log sheets for both the inpatient and ambulatory experience. Please keep track of patient contacts listing teaching point and/or competency met for each particular patient. Remember to de-identify all data per HIPAA compliance. You should use the letter and number designated for each competency on your log.
Web-based resources. The Department of Pediatrics hopes to have a web site for the pediatric clerkship operative in the near future. In the meantime, students are encouraged to incorporate a number of existing resources into their education.
www.unmc.edu/Pediatrics/educ/quiz.htm -- This site is a part of the University of Nebraska’s Department of Pediatrics education home page. It consists of a series of about one hundred multiple choice questions on a variety of pediatric topics. The quizzes can be taken online, and feedback is provided. These may prove useful in preparing for the NBME pediatric exam (vide infra).
www.pedinfo.org/ -- This is an exhaustive index to a variety of pediatric-content sites on the net. It is organized by topic, but is not searchable.
www.med.jhu.edu/peds/neonatology/poi.html -- This is a searchable index to a wide variety of pediatric sites.
www.comsep.org -- This is the website for the Council of Medical Student Education in Pediatrics. It contains the curriculum as well as other resources.
www.clippcases.org -- This is a searchable index to a wide variety of pediatric sites.
Hours. In the interest of patient safety, you will not pick up any new patients after 24 hours on duty (i.e. approximately 8:00 a.m.). Following your call night, you will be expected to complete your clinical duties and tie up loose ends by 1:00 p.m. If you have scheduled teaching sessions and/or clinical skills labs, you will attend these activities. It is understood that you will have no direct patient contact after 1:00 P.M. post call. When you are post call from your neonatal call, during outpatient rotation, you do not work in the ambulatory setting that day. You are expected to inform your attending physician of your schedule.
Evaluation. Your evaluation, at the conclusion of the clerkship, will be submitted by your various preceptors. Your grade will be calculated according to the weight of each part of the rotation. In evaluating you, the faculty is encouraged to base their assessment on the curriculum competencies. As an objective assessment of your knowledge base in pediatric medicine, you will also be required to take the NBME pediatric examination for 3rd year medical students. While this is only one component of your evaluation, a passing score is mandatory for successful completion of the clerkship. During the clerkship, you will also be required to complete an observed history and physical examination, under the supervision of a faculty member. Satisfactory performance on this exercise is also a condition for successful completion of the clerkship. Patients, families, and society expect professional conduct from their physicians. Your evaluation will also reflect our assessment of your professionalism.
There will be no grade change 10 days after the grade is submitted to the Dean’s office.
For more information please contact:
Ms. Joyce Salter
Clerkship Coordinator
Joyce.Salter@CCHMC.ORG
636-0339
or Connie McAneney, M.D.
Pediatrics Clerkship Director
Connie.McAneney@CCHMC.ORG
