Nemours Children’s Hospital (NCH) is sufficiently staffed to run without residents — an advantage over many residency programs. The resident contribution is an added layer of care for NCH care teams. This allows plenty of time within the 80-hour workweek for learning, as well as enough attending supervision for patient safety while you advance in your training.

Building Your Foundation

Although we’re known for our tertiary care, we’re here to support you in your career. The comprehensive pediatric training you’ll get from a residency at Nemours is a solid foundation for either a general pediatrics practice or subspecialty training. 

Improving Patient Care

Residents will serve on NCH standing committees. Residents will also be appointed to develop and lead new initiatives in the areas of patient safety and quality improvement. 

Teaching Is Essential

Faculty, senior leadership and allied health staff acknowledge that the presence of residents drives an even higher level of performance and knowledge acquisition by all caregivers. In addition to learning, residents will be expected to teach medical students, patients and families, and other members of the care delivery community.

Physician Wellness

Our wellness program includes activities specifically designed to address healthy lifestyle, resiliency, workload/work compression, and improving faculty mentorship and support. Components include: 

• free lunch, beverages and snacks
• The NEST (Nemours Educational Suite) provides residents with a space all their own for chatting and relaxing; includes a wellness room and lactation room
• first-year retreat to Westgate River Ranch Resort & Rodeo
• a Wellness Day to attend medical and dental appointments
• free access to the on-site gym and the Nemours Wellness Incentive Program, which gives a 20 percent discount on the resident/family health insurance premium
• monitoring and adjustment of resident workload to ensure educational priorities over service obligations 
• narrative medicine groups that offer residents a facilitated experience, with reflective reading and writing that explore the human experience of medicine and promote resiliency
• presentations and small group sessions attended by residents and faculty on physician burn-out and resilience

What to Expect

Essential resources are available at NCH for all residents to use. These include call rooms, lounges, workrooms, lecture space, simulation labs, on-site access to food, free parking and a residency management software system. 

Care Hand-Offs

The iPass handoff system is used at the time of transitions in care from one resident to another, which happen at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

On-Call Structure

Residents on elective rotations are not assigned to in-house or on-call coverage.

Please note that attendings, residents and fellows are employed and insured by the hospital; they are not employees of a university.