Outpatient Month

Ambulatory Pediatrics

The student will participate in the routine care of children in an outpatient setting. The emphasis will be on normal childhood Health Supervision, Growth Development, Nutrition, Prevention, and Common Problems. The students will be in outpatient clinics at the UAB campus and in private practices of Children's of Alabama pediatricians.

Newborn Nursery

During designated week, the student will be expected to concentrate on the normal newborn and the transition from intrauterine to extrauterine life. The student will have the opportunity to perform physical examinations on numerous newborns and to discuss the care of the newborn with the infant's mother. The student will be expected to learn the common problems of normal and premature newborns during this week.

Adolescent Medicine

Family Place/Private Practice
During designated week, the student will concentrate on the transition from the preteen years to the teenage years and then the transition to adulthood. The emphasis is on the changing physiology, behavior, and growth during these crucial years in normal development. The student will have the opportunity to examine adolescent patients in the custody of the Family Court and local detention centers.

Inpatient Month

The inpatient rotation on the Jr. Student Clerkship in Pediatrics covers a four or five week period of time, during which the student is assigned to one of several "services" which are involved in the care of patients who are admitted to The Children's Hospital of Alabama.  Each service is headed by an attending physician who is a member of the Pediatric faculty.  The attending physician is aided by senior Pediatric Residents and one or two first-year Pediatric Interns in the care of the patient.   Four or five third-year medical students are assigned to each pediatric inpatient service.  Under the supervision of the senior resident, the medical students will be assigned individual primary care patients who are admitted to their pediatric service.  The student will follow these patients from the time of hospital admission through the diagnosis and treatment of their particular problem and be involved in the final discharge planning of the patient. 

At the inception of the hospital stay, the student will be responsible for performing a complete history and physical assessment of the patient, development of a problem-oriented differential diagnosis, a plan of evaluation for the patient's problems, and the desired therapeutic intervention which would be appropriate for each individual problem.  This will be performed independently of the Pediatric House Staff.

The individual history and physical examination, as well as the student's differential diagnosis and proposed evaluation and treatment plans, will be reviewed by the senior resident physician and will be presented to the attending physician during the daily rounds.  It is expected that during the four or five-week inpatient rotation, the student will prepare and hand into the Attending Physician or Senior Resident at least two History and Physical reports each week.  These will be utilized for instruction and in determination of the evaluation.

Throughout the patient's hospital stay, the medical student will be responsible for writing daily, detailed, problem-oriented, progress notes on each of the patients he or she is following.  These will also be reviewed and countersigned by each senior resident physician and the Attending Physician.

During the four or five-week inpatient rotation, each student will be asked to prepare and present to the Attending Physician/ Resident, as well as his fellow students, several topics, to be chosen by the Attending Physician during specified attending teaching sessions.

During the inpatient rotation, the main focus of the day centers on the attending teaching rounds.  These generally occur during the a.m. hours and occupy the majority of the morning.  During these inpatient rounds, the students will be required to present daily changes in the subjective observations of the individual patients, the objective evaluations, such as laboratory, radiologic, measurements, and physical examination, an assessment of any changes in the patient's progress, as well as plans for future evaluation and treatment of this particular patient.  During these times, the attending physician demonstrates his own history taking techniques with selective patients, as well as demonstrate unique physical findings of individual patients seen on rounds.  It is expected that during these rounds, the attending physician will ask questions of students to assess their knowledge of the patient's problems, as well as their knowledge of the rationale for particular assessments and treatments.  These rounds are designed to be interactive, teaching and treatment planning sessions.