Summer 2021
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Fellowship Spotlight: Pediatric Urgent Care at Emory University/Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
By Amy Pattishall MD
The pediatric urgent care (PUC) fellowship at Emory/Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) was developed in 2016. Our mission is to provide additional training to pediatricians about procedures and specific clinical areas pertinent to the practice of pediatric urgent care medicine, to mentor fellows about resource utilization, efficiency, throughput, and customer service, and to support them in academic pursuits. As PUC medicine evolves and expands, we hope to train PUC physicians who will be leaders in education, research and quality improvement related to this field.
Our fellowship program is based in the Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Emory and our fellows gain exposure to PUC patients in a variety of clinical settings. Fellows work clinically at two pediatric emergency departments (PEDs) in free-standing children’s hospitals in Atlanta where they see patients alongside PUC and Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM) colleagues, as well as in the fast-track area of the PED. Our fellows are also fortunate to get exposure to the outpatient urgent care setting through our partnership with the CHOA urgent care network. We draw on the expertise of faculty from our Division’s PEM and ultrasound fellowships, as well as faculty with expertise in sedation and simulation to train PUC fellows in aspects of PUC medicine they may not have been exposed to during residency.
Fellows are offered courses about topics such as clinical teaching, quality improvement, medical ethics and career development. They hone bedside and didactic teaching skills through work with a variety of learners and through dedicated teaching shifts in the PED. Past fellows have presented posters at national meetings, authored review articles and book chapters, participated in division QI projects and developed a resident rotation guide for PUC rotations.
To date, we have graduated seven urgent care fellows. All of our fellows have continued for some time as urgent care physicians in the Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Emory or with CHOA after completing their training, and four continue at either Emory or CHOA today. We are pleased that our July graduating fellow has joined our division at Emory.
While the PUC fellowship at Emory/CHOA was the first to develop at an academic institution, we followed in the footsteps of, and benefited from, the experiences of our colleagues at PM Pediatrics, who were the first to offer such training programs. As more PUC fellowships develop, it has been exciting to collaborate with colleagues across the country who are engaging in similar missions at their own institutions.
The Pediatric Urgent Care fellowship at Emory will be recruiting in the fall of 2021. Please reach out to the fellowship director, Amy Pattishall ([email protected]), if you are interested in learning more.
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