pediatric care. To achieve that, Dr. Acosta is
focused on innovative ways for medical
residents to learn. These include
incorporating the medical residents’ ideas to
enhance their training, such as encouraging
them to offer input during medical rounds
and morning reports and lectures. This kind
of interactivity better prepares them for their
board exams, she says.
During the program, residents are
exposed to multiple aspects of pediatric
care as they make monthly rotations
through departments including the
Pediatric Outpatient Clinic, the Pediatric
Intensive Care Unit (PICU), and the
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
Second- and third-year residents rotate
through the inpatient clinic and supervise
first-year residents. After residency training,
physicians may become pediatricians or
continue their education with a three-year
fellowship program in a pediatric specialty.
“We’ve applied for fellowship programs in
neonatology, infectious disease, and
hospitalist medicine through the
Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical
Education,” says Dr. Acosta. A child and
adolescent psychiatry fellowship program
already is offered for physicians who
have completed a residency program in
general psychiatry.
A good match
Each spring, medical students in the
United States learn where they’ve been
accepted for pediatric residency during a
process called “Match Week.” Residents
eagerly await their assignments, especially
the opportunity to train in pediatrics at a
place like Scott & White, one of the
nation’s largest and most well-respected
multispecialty practice healthcare systems.
Those early days of training can be
rigorous, as residents experience things
they’ve only read about during medical
school. Former Scott & White pediatric
resident Jill Flippin, MD, assistant
professor of pediatrics, Texas A&M Health
Science Center College of Medicine, is now
a pediatrician at the Scott & White Clinic College Station. She remembers having to
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