Welcome to the CHOC Pediatric Residency Program web site. We hope the information here will provide you with a good introduction to our program. Feel free to give us a call if you have any questions.

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What's New

A new overflow team for the winter

In response to the high winter volume, we will now have three intern/senior teams on call at night. This means each intern will now admit only a third of the nightly admissions, rather than half. The patients admitted by this new intern/senior team will be followed by a new hospitalist team during the day. This daytime team will consist of an attending physician and one senior resident. These changes will substantively decrease the workload on the other four teams during the winter.

New admitting process

CHOC is creating a new, simplified admission process using specially trained nurses. This will decrease the time that senior residents on the wards currently spend triaging and arranging admissions. These changes should take place by mid-September.

The first PL-2 Ward Seminar

Our entire second year class recently spent a full day at the first annual CHOC PL-2 Seminar.  The purpose of the seminar was to prepare the second year residents for becoming new ward seniors this month. The lecture topics included antibiotic choices, dehydration and fluid management, surgical emergencies, seizures, pain management, metabolic emergencies, heme/onc emergencies, respiratory failure, and septic shock. Thanks to all of our attendings who gave the lectures.

How to give bad news to parents

Our second year residents are currently participating in a communication course on how to give bad news to parents and how to best approach families in stress. This was developed by Dr. Heather Huzsti, the director of CHOC's Psychology Department, and Dr. Amit Soni, one of our hematology attendings. The course starts with a basic model to facilitate talking about these difficult issues with parents. Then, with our psychology interns role-playing parents, the residents have several opportunities to practice these skills while being videotaped and receive feedback on their performance. The program was run with our PL-3s for the first time last year, who found the program to be extremely practical and helpful.

Stress Reduction for Residents?

The Residency Program has recently finished training members of our pediatric and psychology staff in a unique stress reduction course for residents, originaly developed at Yale for anesthesiology residents. We hope to roll out our version of the course mid-year for all of our residents.

Remodeled Resident Lounge

Residents are enjoying our newly remodeled Resident Lounge on the 1st floor of the hospital.  They were displaced for a couple weeks while the crews were hard at work demo'ing, painting, and recarpeting, but the finished product was well worth the wait!  Brand new sofas offer comfy seating and a great view of the new 42" flat panel TV and DVD player.  There's a new dining area and kitchenette for preparing those on-call gourmet dinners, and a new work area will soon boast 2 new computers and a brand-new printer!  The lounge's grand opening coincided with Dr. Korb's birthday - two great reasons to throw a party!