Pediatrics Core Clerkship

School of Medicine

Providing care for children is a uniquely challenging and rewarding experience since they cannot always articulate how they are feeling. Though this can cause complex and difficult interpersonal communication, it also provides numerous opportunities for education, advocacy, and truly transformational health care. The Pediatrics Core Clerkship serves as a foundational clinical experience for students to learn to evaluate and manage pediatric patients with a broad range of medical diseases across both general and sub-specialty services at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital and in the Nashville community. During this rotation, students experience the breadth and diversity of pathology in the pediatric population, integrating both the science and art of medicine. Students practice experiential clinical learning at the bedside in multidisciplinary teams under the direct supervision of house staff and faculty. All students experience one week of inpatient pediatric hospital medicine wards, one week of newborn nursery, two-weeks of a pediatric subspecialty (both inpatient and outpatient exposures), and two weeks of outpatient pediatrics (hosted at Vanderbilt, Meharry, and local community pediatrician clinics in the Nashville area). Students will also receive further educational experiences including a half-day in the NICU, an optional half-day in the PICU, and a Pediatric Emergency Medicine simulation activity. Other learning activities include daily didactics, morning report-style case-based discussions, weekly Grand Rounds, monthly Chief’s Case Competitions, quizzes, physical exam scavenger hunts, and self-directed case-based learning. The Pediatrics Core Clerkship is one of the 6 required core clerkships that comprise the Foundations of Clinical Care (FCC) Phase during the second year of VUSM’s MD curriculum.