Pediatrics Clerkships

Pediatrics Clerkship Director: Kristen Bettin, MD, MEd
Pediatrics Clerkship Coordinator: Jenn Wilson
Phone: 901.287.6321

The Pediatrics Clerkship at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis is eight weeks long with four weeks spent on an inpatient service and 4 weeks spent on a variety of outpatient experiences. While on the inpatient team, you will become an integral member of the patient care team consisting of the attending hospitalist physician, two supervising residents, three to five interns or junior interns, and two to four medical students. You will attend multi-disciplinary patient and family centered rounds with the team which may include a pharmacist, pharmacy students, a dietician, a medical social worker, a case manager, a charge nurse and the bedside nurse. The student is encouraged to take ownership of his/her patients and participate in all aspects of care including viewing procedures. You will participate in 4 consecutive night shifts where you will have the opportunity to admit patients and manage their acute illnesses in conjunction with the resident team. You will see a breadth of patients from bronchiolitis and neonatal jaundice to meningococcemia and adolescent mental illness to complex genetic and chronic disease. You will see a mixture of service general pediatrics and subspecialty patients. Our residents and faculty are dedicated to teaching and students benefit from the incredible amount and concentration of pathology from which to learn. Didactics are in the form of case-based conferences on Friday afternoons.

Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital is located in the heart of the Memphis Medical Center. Le Bonheur has 255 beds including a 20-bed PICU, large level 4 NICU, and separate CVICU, Neuro ICU, and IMCU. Le Bonheur serves children in Tennessee, as well as the surrounding states. Le Bonheur is also the only level 1 pediatric trauma center in the region. Le Bonheur has been recognized as one of the best children’s hospitals in the country by U.S. News and World Report with nationally recognized programs in neuroscience, pulmonology, orthopedics, cardiology, gastroenterology, urology, and nephrology among their 45 specialties. The very busy Emergency Department has 80,000 visits each year, the hospital admits 14,000 patients per year, and the outpatient center supports 95,000 visits each year! Le Bonheur offers great breadth and depth of clinical experiences both for the inpatient and outpatient portions of the clerkship.

The outpatient month affords the student opportunities in many different settings including: working in an outpatient private pediatrician preceptor’s office, attending St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital clinics, rounding in the Newborn Center (NICU) and newborn nursery at Regional One, observing developmental assessments at the Boling Center for Developmental Disabilities, working shifts in the ED, attending multiple subspecialty clinic experiences at Le Bonheur’s Outpatient Center, and fostering positive behaviors for adolescents at Youth Villages. If you have specific interests or requests, please let us know! We will do our best to accommodate those requests.

Grading for the clerkship is based on the clinical evaluation (50 percent) and pediatrics shelf exam (35 percent), as well as the Slide exams (10 percent), Outpatient/Newborn evaluation (5 percent), and Outpatient rotation (Pass/Low Pass/Fail). For all locations, all subjective evaluations are graded on the same scale, to provide enhanced standardization and equity.

Visit our Pediatric Clerkship website for the syllabus and all the details.

 

Pediatrics Clerkship Director: Cathy A. Stevens, MD
Contact: Debby Gignilliat

Children’s Hospital at Erlanger has 100 beds, including a 60-bed level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and a 14-bed Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. There is a 24-hour pediatric emergency department staffed by board certified emergency pediatricians. A beautiful new emergency department/trauma center for children opened in the fall of 2002. Ours is the first Level 1 pediatric trauma center in the state. We also have a very busy outpatient department with approximately 70,000 visits per year. There are 34 faculty members with all pediatric subspecialties represented. There is also a cystic fibrosis center, a Children’s Cancer Center and Craniofacial Center located at Erlanger. Thus, the volume and variety of patients that are available to medical students are tremendous.

There are usually one to eight junior medical students rotating at Erlanger at one time. Students spend one month on the inpatient service and one month on the outpatient rotation. Medical students are active members of the medical team taking care of patients. They will be expected to learn about normal growth and development, how to evaluate children of different ages, diagnosis and treatment of common pediatric conditions and have the opportunity to be exposed to many unusual disorders. Because of the relatively small number of students, there is a greater amount of individualized attention and responsibility that is given to each student. There is direct faculty supervision wherever students are assigned on inpatient or outpatient services. Students will attend five consecutive night shifts while on inpatient. Grading is the same as for the Memphis clerkship. The hospital provides modestly furnished apartments for students rotating in Chattanooga (two students to each apartment) approximately 15 to 20 minutes for the hospital. Students are provided with debit meal cards which can be used at the Erlanger cafeteria and eateries at Erlanger.

The Pediatrics Residency Program is based at Children’s Hospital at Erlanger and provides an excellent blend of academics and clinical training for 24 residents (eight at each of three levels). The program is fully accredited and is an important component of the ten residency programs at the Chattanooga Unit. The Pediatric program includes residency education in all pediatric subspecialties but is designed primarily to provide a broad-based experience in general pediatrics.

For more information about the Chattanooga Clerkships (including housing, meals, etc.) or the Pediatrics Residency, go to the Chattanooga Pediatric Clerkship website.

 

Pediatrics Clerkship Director: Joseph Peeden, MD

The Pediatrics Clerkship at East Tennessee Children's Hospital is centered around an institution that has cared for the children of East Tennessee for seventy-nine years. We are small in the numbers of students that are in our Clerkship, but mighty with experience and opportunity to learn Pediatrics. Our Hospital is a 152-bed facility. We have a busy inpatient service with 5,799 admissions last year. The student will be a part of a small inpatient team. There may or may not be a Resident physician, but there is always an attending that is interested and astute. There is daily and easy access to the attending physicians. The call is a five-night call, during the inpatient part of the rotation. The call ends for the student at midnight. We have all Pediatric Subspecialties available for inpatient consultation.

We have an excellent NICU experience at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. The neonatologists are first rate, and it is busy. We try to have the student exposed to normal newborns as well in our well baby nursery. Further experience with well care is obtained during the student's outpatient rotation. The student will spend a day a week with a busy private pediatrician. I also try to have the student spend a day within a completely different outpatient model of care.

In other words, if the private doctor has a practice based on continuity of care, I will have the student exposed to a clinic type practice. One in which the patients are seen by multiple pediatricians. The outpatient rotation will include specialty clinics as well. We have five call days as an outpatient student. These are spent in the Emergency department with the Clerkship director. We have a busy ER. Last year we saw 69,000 children.

We have 16 to 19 scheduled lectures. Really, they are more like a tiny symposium than a formal lecture. Topics are varied and include general and subspecialty pediatrics. There are weekly "In and Out" rounds with the Clerkship Director. In which interesting inpatients are discussed along with outpatients. We have access to Simulation labs here at Children's and also at the University of Tennessee Campus.

We believe that this can be a fine clerkship. I would encourage potential students to ask our clerkship graduates about their experience here with Vol Peds!