Clinical Education Program Community Experience
Bellevue Hospital has a long history of involvement in its surrounding community. The pediatric training program offers a variety of outside experiences for residents interspersed throughout three years of training, including an elective rotation in community pediatrics, public health and child advocacy.
This rotation accomplishes the following goals:
- to familiarize residents with the myriad of services for children available in the community
- to teach residents about some of the issues facing specific pediatric populations for whom community services are particularly important
- to introduce residents to the variety of settings where pediatricians practice medicine
- to teach residents how to work as pediatric consultants for a variety of community agencies
- to teach residents effective strategies for advocacy, either for individual families or in legistative or regulatory settings
- to provide residents with a more complete understanding of family and community life for families with chronically ill children
Specific experiences include:
- visitation to a community-based health care center in Chinatown
- school-based medical clinics
- Head Start, an Early Intervention program
- New Alternatives For Children- a program for foster children
- home visits to families of children cared for at Bellevue
- several outreach programs of the New York City Department of Health
