Pediatric Residency Program

The Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital

Many positive changes have occurred at the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital in recent years that have resulted in tremendous growth of our Pediatric Residency Program. While many children's hospitals are struggling in our current health care environment, the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital has experienced an unprecedented surge in both hospital admissions and outpatient visits.

Total hospital admissions in 2003 were over 8,000. Outpatient visits with Cleveland Clinic general pediatricians and all pediatric subspecialties were more than 311,000 visits.

Within the past five years, the Cleveland Clinic has formed relationships with the majority of the hospitals in our region, created exclusive contracts with insurers, and established new facilities that have dramatically expanded our pool of pediatric patients, thus boosting both hospital admissions and outpatient visits. In addition to generating patient volume, these changes have balanced the Clinic's focus, which traditionally was subspecialty care. Now, residents benefit from a unique patient mix, with large volumes of primary general pediatric care side by side with extremely complex subspecialty cases.

Over the past five years, the Clinic began to expand in the Greater Cleveland area by establishing Family Health Centers in the Cleveland suburbs, and hiring additional general pediatricians to staff these facilities. The pediatricians in the Family Health Centers serve as continuity clinic preceptors and ward attendings, as well as supervising block outpatient general pediatric rotations.

As recently as 1995, the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital had been essentially locked out of newborn care in the Cleveland area. The Clinic expanded its newborn populations by opening an obstetrics unit and newborn nursery in 1995.  The Cleveland Clinic Neonatologists, in conjunction with MetroHealth Medical Center, have established a regional neonatal network, whereby our physicians currently manage more than 60% of all newborns in the region.   In July, 2001, we opened our new Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

The Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital has become a major national and international referral center for many of the pediatric subspecialties, drawing patients from surrounding states and all over the world because of the unique care we are able to provide.

The Pediatric Residency Training Program at the Cleveland Clinic has benefited greatly from all of the above changes, and has grown with the Children's Hospital. As of July 2004, more than 40 residents will be enrolled in our Pediatric Residency Training program.

All of our residents participate in pediatric research.  The residents are closely mentored by faculty members of their choice, and regularly meet with our research program coordinators to guide them through the process.  The resident's project may take the form of a retrospective study, prospective study or case report. A detailed curriculum in the critical analysis of medical literature (including research methodology and biostatistics).  In their second and third years, our residents share the results of their projects at our Annual Pediatric Research Day.  This unique opportunity fosters the education development of our residents throughout their training.  The residents have the option of scheduling elective time for research.

The priority of the staff at the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital is to provide all of our patients with the highest quality health care possible. We consider it our privilege, as well as our responsibility, to train the next generation of pediatricians to meet this same high standard. We feel the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital provides the ideal mix of patients, academic environment, and highly motivated teaching staff for pediatric residency training.

Gary Williams, M.D.

Program Director

Cleveland Clinic Foundation  |  The Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital for Rehabilitation
Contact Us  |   Privacy Statement  |   Disclaimer
© The Cleveland Clinic 2004