Dr. Petru, Infectious Disease attending, in her office.
Children's Hospital Oakland
Residency Program
Departments
Primary Care Pediatrics
Children's Hospital Oakland is a major primary care resource for a large, diverse urban population, allowing each resident to gain an extensive experience in primary care pediatrics. The Primary Care Division includes a full time physician director and twelve attendings with special interests and training. Resident involvement consists of both month-long rotations and weekly continuity clinics, and this represents a major part of the curriculum.
On average, residents spend about two months per year on rotations in primary care pediatrics. This comprehensive experience includes three main areas: community, advocacy and primary care (CAP). During the CAP rotation, residents take care of both their own continuity patients and patients in the division’s special primary care clinics such as the Foster Care Clinic, Southeast Asian Clinic, Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Clinic, and the TB Clinic.
Residents have been instrumental in developing the Community Outreach and Advocacy Program, and under the supervision of Primary Care faculty, they serve the most needy children in our community, visiting over 20 community sites during the CAP rotation. The advocacy curriculum’s goal is to familiarize residents with their role as political advocates for the good of all children. By the end of the CAP rotation, residents are prepared to collaborate with their representatives and community leaders to effect social change.
Continuity clinics are composed of a group of PL-1s, PL-2s and PL-3s, supervised by the same two primary care attendings throughout the year. Each resident's weekly continuity clinic is "protected" time, free from other clinical responsibilities, so that each resident can develop a panel of personal patients for whom that resident is the main provider of care during residency. Elective rotations in private offices, other urban clinics such as La Clinica de la Raza or the Asian Health Center, and rural areas of California, are also available at the PL-2 and PL-3 level.
The Primary Care Division has started several innovative programs. The clinic houses the Reach Out and Read Literacy Program, encouraging parents to read to their children (in part by giving free children's books to clinic families). In addition, there is a child safety program that provides free education, car seats and bicycle helmets, and a Medical Legal Clinic where needy families have on site access to pro-bono legal services.
Emergency Medicine
With the only Pediatric Emergency Medicine Division in northern California and the busiest facility for pediatric emergencies, Children's Hospital Oakland provides an outstanding educational opportunity for residents.
Almost 50,000 patients per year visit our newly renovated Emergency Department. As the designated level 1 trauma center for Alameda County, we also have a helicopter-landing site for critical pediatric transfers from outlying areas. Because less acute patients triage to our daytime and after-hours urgent care clinics, most emergency department visits represent serious illnesses. Approximately 5,500 admissions to Children's Hospital initially present to our Emergency Department each year, usually without a previously made diagnosis.
The department faculty consists of 14 attendings, board certified in Pediatric Emergency Medicine. They provide 24-hour in-house coverage and supervision of residents and medical students assigned to the department.
Generalist Inpatient Divisions
Children's Hospital Oakland provides inpatient care to almost 10,000 patients a year.
Our intensive care unit is an outstanding educational experience for residents; they gain exposure to the most common pediatric critical care problems, such as meningitis, septic shock, acute respiratory failure and head trauma, as well as some exposure to post-op cardiac surgery patients and rare diseases. With an experienced pediatric critical care attending in the ICU 24 hours a day, this is a superb setting for generalist training.
Our general inpatient wards also offer a great educational experience for the generalist, with a lot of "bread-and-butter" pediatric cases, such as asthma, bronchiolitis, pneumonia, pyelonephritis and gastroenteritis with dehydration, as well as a variety of subspecialty cases.
We have three ward teams at our main hospital, Silver, Purple and Orange. Interns and residents rotate through each of these teams and receive outstanding teaching from the hospitalists, chief residents, and the community teaching attendings.
Subspecialty Divisions
As a major tertiary care center, Children's Hospital Oakland offers a spectrum of subspecialty care that is broader than many university-based pediatric referral services.
In the course of training, residents gain exposure to many of the subspecialists — on inpatient rotations and on elective rotations, which include outpatient specialty clinics. Teaching conferences also reflect the breadth of pediatric specialties.
There are five fellowships based at Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland:
- Hematology/Oncology
- Infectious Diseases
- Emergency Medicine
- Pulmonary Medicine
- Pediatric Intensive Care.
The following list includes Children's Hospital-based divisions and the number of faculty in each division:
Pediatrics
| Division | Number of Faculty |
| Adolescent Medicine | 2 |
| Allergy | 1 |
| Primary Care Services | 13 |
| Anesthesiology | 16 |
| Cardiology | 7 |
| Child Development | 3 |
| Child Protection | 1 |
| Child Psychiatry | 2 |
| Critical Care | 8 |
| Craniofacial | 1 |
| Dermatology | 1 |
| Diagnostic Imaging/Radiology | 6 |
| Emergency Medicine | 14 |
| Endocrinology/Metabolism | 4 |
| Gastroenterology | 3 |
| Hematology/Oncology | 11 |
| Hospitalists | 6 |
| Infectious Diseases | 3 |
| Medical Genetics | 1 |
| Neonatology | 18 |
| Nephrology | 3 |
| Neurology | 5 |
| Pathology | 2 |
| Pulmonary Medicine | 4 |
| Rehabilitation Medicine | 2 |
| Rheumatology | 1 |
Surgical Subspecialties:
| Division | Number of Faculty |
| Cardiothoracic | 1 |
| Dental | 3 |
| Neurosurgery | 4 |
| Ophthalmology | 3 |
| Orthopedics | 5 |
| Otolaryngology | 3 |
| Plastic and Reconstructive | 4 |
| Urology | 4 |
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