- Do you have a freestanding children's hospital?
- Is this a family-friendly program?
- Is there sufficient patient volume so I can have multiple exposures to a variety of diseases?
- What is the program's balance between primary and specialty care?
- What's the call schedule like?
- Do you have a research project requirement for graduation?
- Is it possible to do an international elective in your program?
- What are the fellowship opportunities available?
- What's Iowa got that other programs don't?
1. Do you have a freestanding children's hospital?
No, we do not; the University of Iowa Children's Hospital is a state of the art pediatric facility integrated within the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. A hospital within a hospital, University of Iowa Children's Hospital benefits from the sophisticated services and comprehensive resources of University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, which is consistently ranked as one of America's Best Hospitals by US News and World Report. As part of an internationally recognized university teaching hospital, we have access to diagnostic equipment and treatment modalities that are not found at many freestanding children's hospitals. Clinics that are part of University of Iowa Children's Hospital are easily identified by the quilt logo.
2. Is this a family friendly program?
Yes! We love children and support residents in their efforts to balance work with family life. We have several dual physician resident and faculty families and understand the stresses. Women residents receive up to 6 weeks of paid maternity leave after delivery; we have a Parental Leave Elective that can be incorporated into this time if the resident chooses, so as not to use any of their vacation time for maternity leave. Men get 5 working days off for paternity leave. The house staff health insurance policy provides full coverage for spouses and children, and all medications are free. There are several childcare facilities near the hospital and one on-site. The training program also has activities during the year where all family members are invited, i.e. the resident picnic.
3. Is there sufficient patient volume so that I can have multiple exposures to a variety of diseases?
With 4,000 annual inpatient pediatric admissions and 110,000 clinic visits you will see plenty of the most common illnesses and trauma that children experience and plenty of the "zebra's" as well. Our clinical practice serves the general pediatric health care needs of the local community and the subspecialty needs of the region. Our department receives referrals for specialized services from neighboring states as well.
Patients are referred from across the nation for certain specialized pediatric treatments and services, such as bone marrow transplantation, pediatric cardiology, otolaryngology, neurosurgery and orthopaedics. In addition, we conduct clinics in other cities and towns throughout Iowa. Our patients represent all pediatric age groups and all socioeconomic strata and they present with virtually all acute and chronic conditions.
4. What is the program's balance between primary and specialty care?
We seek to provide each resident physician with a sufficiently broad experience that he or she can choose wisely among all the pediatric options to pursue a career in the general practice of pediatrics, a subspecialty service career or an academic career. About two thirds of our graduates go on to practice general pediatrics while one third go on to fellowships in pediatric subspecialties or academic pediatrics.
5. What's the call schedule like?
As a resident in our program, you will not be on-call more often than every fourth night and usually less often. Home call occurs every 5-7 nights on outpatient rotations and you will have one elective month with no call at all per year.
6. Do you have a research project requirement for graduation?
While we do not have a requirement to complete a research project, we do encourage residents to work on bench or clinical research projects along with our faculty. The Department of Pediatrics ranks in the top 10 in public institutions for National Institutes of Health funding and we have 2 Howard Hughes research investigators in our department. Two of our residents have won the prestigious Society of Pediatric Research's Resident Research Awards in the last few of years.
7. Is it possible to do an international elective in your program?
Absolutely!
8. What are the fellowship opportunities available?
We currently have 23 fellows training in our 10 accredited fellowship programs.
9. What's Iowa got that other programs don't?
While pediatricians are generally nice people, the University of Iowa Children's Hospital pediatric faculty are uniformly wonderful people, and exceptionally dedicated teachers too. - All the subspecialties are represented in our training program, including sports medicine, rheumatology and adolescent medicine. We also have a child abuse specialist and an epileptologist.
- We have a new bone marrow transplant unit and brand new PICU and NICU.
- Our pediatric surgery colleagues are ranked in the top ten nationally.
- Iowa City is a highly intellectual community with premier arts events that are accessible to residents in terms of cost and location.
- Even before the new work hour rules, our residents worked 60-65 hours per week.
- We have an outstanding school system for children in grades K-12.
- A great training program and a high quality of life at an affordable price.
- You'll have opportunities to meet the next President of the United States.
If you have additional questions please contact our program coordinator at ambrosya-amlong@uiowa.edu
Top of Page
|
