Advocate Hope Children's Hospital

Residency Program

The Advocate Christ Medical Center Pediatric Residency Program is dedicated to preparing physicians for a career in pediatrics, whether as a subspecialist or generalist. During the three-year program, residents are exposed to a rich variety of pediatric experiences at Advocate Hope Children's Hospital from the diagnostic dilemmas and management challenges of primary care to highly sophisticated and unusual examples of tertiary care. Over the past 10 years, our graduates have obtained a wide variety of fellowships, at excellent programs including the University of Pennsylvania (CHOP), Baylor, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, UC-San Diego, Mayo Clinic, Ohio State, University of Pittsburgh, Children's Memorial, Emory University, University of Michigan, and Medical College of Wisconsin.

Program Specifics

Residents who train at Christ Medical Center diagnose and manage a range of acute and chronic pediatric diseases of all levels of severity. The residents develop competency in managing "bread and butter" cases, as well as unusually and critically ill patients on the inpatient services and critical units, and in the acute care clinic and the pediatric emergency center.

Ambulatory settings are used extensively for the education of the residents, in general and subspecialty pediatrics. In addition to acute care, continuity clinics and office-based activities, outpatient experiences are formally required in:

In addition, all of the medical subspecialty electives require that a significant portion of each rotation is spent in the outpatient setting.

Since November 2000, our residency has been a pilot program for the national Healthy Steps initiative. This is a clinical and educational program that emphasizes the promotion of health and optimal development in young children. Under the supervision of a trained Healthy Steps specialist, the residents longitudinally participate in normal newborn clinic, home visits, enhanced well-child clinic visits and parent groups.

Each resident, of course, has a weekly continuity clinic. In 2009-2010, 9 of our residents had their continuity clinics in the private sector under the guidance of outstanding general pediatricians.

The basic in house schedule is as follows:

Daily Schedule Example

M,T,W,F (Thursday w/ 10 a.m.-1 p.m. lecture block)

6:30 to 8:00 a.m: Signout and Morning Report- Work Rounds

10:30 to 11:30 a.m: Attending Rounds- Lecture Block Thursday- 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m: Continuity Care Clinics (one half-day per week)

3:00 pm: Sign-out Short Call

6:00 pm: Sign-out - Long Call 

7:00 pm: Night Shift Teaching Rounds

Rotation Schedule:

Rotation Schedule Block PGY I PGY II PGY III  1 NICU NICU  NICU  2 Pediatric Ward Pediatric Ward 3 Pediatric Ward E.R. E.R.  4 Well Baby Ambulatory  5 Adolescent CAR* 6 Peds ICU Peds ICU 7 Elective Electives Electives 8 Well Baby 9 Developmental 10 Ambulatory Ambulatory Surg - MS** 11 Night Shift Academic 12 Night Shift Night Shift 13 Vacation Vacation Vacation

* Community/Advocacy Rotation
** Surgical Office Based - Musculoskeletal Rotation

We have developed a hospitalist program to help provide direct hands-on education and clinical support to the residents. We have full-time, 24/7 coverage. The work of the hospitalists is integrated completely into the residency program.
We have a full-time, 4th year Chief Resident Model.