Fellows Clinical Experience

Our fellows obtain the majority of their clinical experience through rotations at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the UC San Diego Jacobs Medical Center (Level 3) and at Rady Children's Hospital of San Diego (Level 4). Both hospitals are designated regional NICU's providing neonatal care for the greater San Diego County area.

Over the three year experience at Jacobs Medical Center, each fellow will lead the unit, supervise pediatric residents and medical students, and coordinate care with other providers when on clinical rotation. A main component of care includes providing prenatal consults for parents at risk of delivering preterm infants or infants with known fetal anomalies. The fellow is the leader of the neonatal resuscitation team that is a specialized group attending all high risk deliveries. Well newborns at UC San Diego Jacobs Medical Center are cared for in couplet care with their families and receive pediatric care from our dedicated group of pediatric hospitalist. Fellows are exposed to this practice model and learn to provide consultative services for these newborns. Additional rotations occur in perinatology and newborn services.

At Rady Children's Hospital of San Diego, fellows get unique exposure to post-operative cardiac surgical care in the Cardiovascular ICU where fellows play an integral part on the care team. During the Rady Children's Hospital rotation fellows provide direct patient care alongside attendings and neonatal nurse practitioners in a frontline practice model setting. As this hospital provides the majority of neonatal transport services, fellows also learn how to manage transport calls and participate as the physician on the transport team when appropriate.

Fellows actively participate in the NICU High Risk Follow-up Program which provides neurodevelopmental evaluation and follow-up for all high-risk infants through 3 years of age. Fellows learn to administer screening exams and follow a panel of patients longitudinally throughout the training program.

Time is also available in second and third years for fellows to participate in customized electives addressing the individual needs of the trainees.

We are actively engaged in establishing our Global Health experience. Dr. Carlos Ramos is our Pediatric Global Health Program Director and our rotations in Uganda and Rwanda will provide educational opportunities in aspects of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine in low resource settings. The rotations provide exposure to large patient volumes, high risk delivery services, and opportunities to work with health professionals and trainees from other countries.