Skip to main content

Resident Education

Academic General Pediatrics

The UC San Diego Academic General Pediatric Kearny Mesa and La Jolla clinics serve as the main outpatient training site for first and second-year UC San Diego pediatric residents. All trainees have the opportunity to work with multiple faculty pediatricians to learn evidence-based approaches for the management of common and uncommon pediatric conditions in a diverse patient population. Second-year residents assume additional responsibilities including learning how to provide effective phone triage and supervising/educating medical students. Additional educational components include daily small-group teaching seminars and weekly journal clubs.

The clinics also are the primary training sites for continuity clinic where residents can develop a longitudinal relationship with patients, families, and a faculty mentor. There is a strong commitment to continued learning with a structured weekly educational curriculum.

Residents may also elect to work in the UCSD AGP Special Needs Clinic, based at the Kearny Mesa site, to learn evidence-based approaches to providing care for children with complex medical needs; also housed at the Kearny Mesa site are Travel Medicine clinic visits and residents can elect to work with faculty who specialize in these visits, rotate into a clinic for children affected by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, as well as clinics at UC San Diego Health specializing in caring for infants affected by HIV.

UCSD Academic General Pediatrics also partners with the federally qualified health center, Family Health Centers of San Diego (FHCSD), and has faculty staffing their City Heights and El Cajon locations to provided evidence- based medical student, resident and fellow teaching, training, and clinical care for pediatric refugee, immigrant and migrant populations. They provide multi-disciplinary teaching for pediatric, medicine-pediatric, and FHCSD family medicine residents.

Academic General Pediatrics faculty also serve as mentors for resident academic projects (RAP).

Newborn Medicine

First-year residents spend two to four weeks on our service caring for term and late preterm newborns.  They work with a multidisciplinary team including attending pediatricians, pediatric nurse practitioners, lactation consultants, social workers, occupational therapists, and nurses to learn how to manage common and uncommon newborn conditions. In addition to learning from direct patient care, other educational components include teaching modules and daily didactic instruction.  Yearly, the newborn hospitalists, in conjunction with the UCSD Division of Neonatology, run a half -day seminar for the first year pediatric and medicine/pediatric residents.  Newborn hospitalists also serve as mentors for resident academic projects (RAP).  

Residents may also choose to do a newborn or breastfeeding elective in their second or third year of residency.  The breastfeeding medicine elective crosses over between work with faculty in the UCSD Section of Academic Newborn Medicine at UC San Diego Health/Jacobs Medical Center, the UCSD Academic General Pediatrics Frost St and/or La Jolla site and the UC Health Milk Bank.

Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics Core Rotation

Residents in Pediatrics and Internal Medicine-Pediatrics receive 4 weeks of required subspecialty training in Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics in their first or second year of training.  During their rotation, residents work closely with UCSD Developmental-Behavioral Pediatricians in subspecialty and multi-disciplinary clinics at the University of California San Diego, Rady Children's Hospital, and the San Diego Regional Center. They spend time with developmental service providers including developmental psychologists, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and audiologists, and learn about community resources to better understand the interface between medicine and other systems of care in the nurturing of children with developmental and behavioral concerns.
This core rotation provides the resident physician with the knowledge and skills needed to assess pediatric development and behavior in all clinical encounters.  After completion of the rotation, residents will have increased their 1) understanding of typical and atypical child development, 2) ability to identify and manage developmental and behavioral disorders, and 3) appreciation of the influence of family, school, and social environment in an individual child's development and behavior.