Clinical Exposure at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego

Most fellowships are 3 years long, in compliance with ACGME requirements. Clinical fellows at Rady Children's Hospital benefit from exposure to the majority of children requiring inpatient hospitalization in San Diego and Imperial Counties, a catchment area of over 3 million people with exceptional ethnic and socioeconomic diversity.

Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego serves as the region's only Level 1 Trauma Center for children, and boasts a superb Level III nursery. Fellow proficiency is also boosted by exposure to children undergoing bone marrow, kidney and living-donor liver transplants.

Research Opportunities

Research opportunities are vast, with many fellows taking advantage of basic research opportunities available at UCSD, or the nearby Burnham, Scripps or Salk Research Institutes. Many fellows are supported by institutional NIH training grants, philanthropic foundation funds, or recent support from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (stem cells). For those pursuing clinical research projects, progress is facilitated by unfettered access to the clinical resources at Rady Children's Hospital, and availability of the longstanding General Clinical Research Center at UCSD. Additionally, fellows are afforded the opportunity to acquire and hone clinical research skills by enrollment in the CREST  (Clinical Research Effectiveness through Supplemental Training course at UCSD). This modular curriculum delivers critical training in patient-oriented research, biostatistics, and epidemiology.

Pediatric Fellow Research Conference

A department-wide Pediatric Fellow Research Conference is attended by all medical fellows supported by the Department. This bi-weekly 2-hour conference provides opportunity for fellows to network, troubleshoot and hone their presentation skills. Lectures are provided by experts on practical and necessary topics such as mentoring, picking a research topic, human subjects protection and writing an IRB, writing successful grants and manuscripts and negotiating positions in academia. Fellows receive the benefit of experience from their colleagues and realize the trials and tribulations of career and research progress. Fellows also benefit from the highest quality weekly Grand Rounds at Rady Children's Hospital, and from their subspecialty specific conferences such as journal club, case conference, morbidity and mortality, and research conferences.

Housestaff Policies, Guidelines, & Sample Documents

Information about UCSD policies and procedures, housestaff benefits, licensure and registration is available on the Office of Graduate Medical Education website .