Ambulatory Pediatrics

The Children's Health Center at Jefferson and the Ambulatory Pediatrics Unit at nearby Wilmington Hospital of the Christiana Care Health System are the educational centers for General Ambulatory Pediatrics. Between the two facilities, approximately 30,000 patients of all ages are seen annually for well-child care, acute illness, emergencies, and chronic conditions.

A group of 19 full-time pediatric faculty in the Division of General Pediatrics supervises resident education and clinical care. During all sessions, faculty members are available to counsel and advise residents and medical students. Following a daily conference or journal club, residents care for approximately four to six patients in each afternoon session. In order to develop teaching skills, senior residents function as clinical preceptors for the medical students and junior residents.

Continuity clinics, designed to give residents a longitudinal experience with their own panel of patients, take place at multiple sites including Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Wilmington Hospital, and several of the Nemours primary care clinics. Because patients are primarily from lower socioeconomic groups, residents learn to manage problems typically associated with poverty and family disorganization. Residents assign patients to their continuity clinics with regard to those children cared for while on inpatient, NICU, well-baby nursery, and ambulatory block rotations.

Residents spend weeklong sessions in the offices of community-based pediatricians. This allows residents the chance to care for suburban, urban, and rural patients in an office setting that is a more realistic preparation for private practice than the traditional hospital clinic. Community pediatricians serve as excellent role models who can demonstrate how various legal, social, financial, and governmental factors affect a private office practitioner. Residents can increase their outpatient experience for much of their second and third years.