Innovative Programs

Coaching Program

We were the first program in the country to have a Coaching Program for residents, started in 2013 as an innovative approach to providing longitudinal assessment and feedback to residents throughout their training, and to help residents develop skills of lifelong learning and self-reflection. Each resident is assigned a specific Faculty Coach who observes and guides that resident across multiple rotations, inpatient and outpatient settings, and training years. The Coach observes the resident in multiple clinical situations (rounds, clinic, initial H&P, handoffs, supervisory encounters, care conferences, and others) and provides specific and directed feedback aimed at strengthening clinical skills. Each coach oversees approximately 10 residents.

IPASS Handoff Study Site

We were one of the ten national sites for the NIH-funded IPASS Handoff Study, and we were one of the first two sites to actually pilot the curriculum.  Through this endeavor, our residents have felt much more prepared for giving and receiving handoffs. Through this study, it was found there was a 30% decrease in adverse events after IPASS training. And at this point, we have extended the curriculum to pediatrics Sub-I’s and Fellows.

LEAD (Leadership Education in Advancing Diversity)

Mission: Educate and empower the next generation of medical leaders to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion.

 The LEAD Program, founded in the Department of Pediatrics in 2017, is a 10-month longitudinal leadership program for residents and fellows across GME to develop leadership and scholarship skills in addressing issues related to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), to produce leaders in academic medicine dedicated to EDI, and to improve the culture of medicine. Learn more about the LEAD Program and annual diversity and inclusion forum.  

New Resident Boot Camp

New Resident Boot Camp is a novel program that allows all first-year pediatric residents to meet weekly for 2 months with protected time to further develop skills in being a physician leader. 

Residency Council

Residency Council is one of many opportunities for residents to help improve our program. Every year, 2 class representatives, 1 class Wellness representative, 1 class Diversity representative, and 1 representative from each track are elected by their peers to represent their voice on the council. Meetings are held monthly with the Chief Residents and our Program Director to work on Annual Program Evaluation-identified program improvements and to discuss current challenges.

Quality Improvement

Understanding our role in quality improvement and performance improvement is important to our role as leaders in healthcare systems.  As such, we have a required QI curriculum to allow residents hands-on, experiential learning in improving real systems of care at LPCH.

Scholarly Concentrations

The Scholarly Concentrations were created in 2009 to give residents more formalized training and personalized mentorship in one of six scholarly areas:

  1. Basic Science
  2. Clinical Research 
  3. Community Engagement and Advocacy (StAT program)
  4. Medical Education
  5. Quality and Performance Improvement 
  6. Global Health

Our goal is to develop leaders in pediatrics. We believe that in-depth training and experiential learning through completion of a scholarly project empowers our residents to approach medicine in a scholarly way and see how to incorporate scholarship into their careers to improve children’s health.

Valley Children’s Hospital ED Rotation

Residents spend one formative block during junior year in the busy ED at Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera, CA (near Fresno). Goals of this highly rated rotation include becoming comfortable managing common ED presentations including traumas, low- and high-acuity complaints, gaining competence in common pediatric procedures, and understanding how practice may vary in a different health care system.

Watsonville Rotation

Starting in 2014, we have added an elective rotation at Watsonville Community Hospital (in Watsonville, CA, 1 1/4 hours from Stanford, along the California coast), where our junior and senior residents can spend a month working as a Co-Attending, caring for pediatric and neonatal patients, on the wards, level 2 nursery, ED, and in follow-up clinic at the FQHC clinic on-site. This rotation allows residents to have incredible autonomy in a community setting, better understanding how to care for a underserved population of patients, including a large migrant farm working community. Residents are backed up by Stanford Children's Health hospitalists.

X+Y Curriculum

Our residency program transitioned to an X+Y curriculum in 2021 to improve resident wellness and allow focused learning on inpatient and outpatient rotations. Our X rotations are generally clinic-free rotations, which are mostly hospital-based, and our Y rotations are rotations that include continuity clinics and are generally outpatient and elective rotations.