Child Neurology Residency Program

“Child Neurology Residency Program” Transcript

Hello and welcome to the University of California, Irvine and Children’s Hospital Orange County Child Neurology Residency Program. My name is Rachel Pearson and I’m the residency program director here at UCI and CHOC.

We offer an ACGME-accredited combined pediatrics and child neurology residency program. This is a 5 year program that includes 2 years in general pediatrics and three years in neurology, after which you’ll be eligible to sit for the board exams for pediatrics and for neurology with special qualifications in child neurology.

I’ll be providing an overview of the child neurology training years, the latter 3 years of training. During this portion of their training, our residents rotate at 3 sites, the Children’s Hospital of Orange County or CHOC for short, the UC Irvine Medical Center and the Long Beach Veteran Affairs Medical Center.

CHOC, the primary training site, is a free standing children’s hospital with 334 beds that includes a pediatric emergency room, neonatal ICU, pediatric ICU and a dedicated neurosciences unit. We’re also a level 1 pediatric trauma center and a level 4 epilepsy center and have the only inpatient pediatric mental health unit in Orange County that cares for young children.

Our residents do their adult inpatient neurology training at UC Irvine Medical Center, a comprehensive stroke center, and level 1 trauma center, located about two miles away from CHOC, and most of the outpatient adult neurology training occurs at the Long Beach VA. Throughout our sites, we serve a diverse patient population in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic background, abilities, and spoken language.

While most of our patients at CHOC are from Orange County, we also see patients from all over the state and some even travel across the country to benefit from our unique clinical programs. With that in mind, our trainees see a wide array of acuity and neuropathology.

As previously mentioned, we’re a Level 4 epilepsy center with a 12 bed epilepsy monitoring unit with wired rooms for long term EEG monitoring. Over the past year, our team successfully performed 54 epilepsy surgeries along with 39 additional VNS procedures.

We’re a national center for pediatric movement disorders and deep brain stimulation, and we also have a dedicated center for autism and neurodevelopmental disorders that includes pediatric neurologists with training and neurodevelopmental disabilities, behavioral pediatricians, psychologists, and behavior therapists.

Some of our other specialty programs include neuromuscular disorders, concussion and traumatic brain injury, sleep medicine, neurovascular disorders, neonatal neurology and neuro oncology.

Our curriculum is somewhat unique in that we integrate adult neurology training across three years. So during the PGY 3 year residents complete six months of inpatient adult neurology intermixed with child neurology, outpatient rotations, inpatient rotations and electives. They then do three months of outpatient adult neurology in both the 4th and 5th years along with their child neurology rotations which include the inpatient service, outpatient clinics, EEG and epilepsy monitoring unit, neuroradiology, neuropathology and neonatal neurology as well as a variety of electives. Throughout the three years, the residents have a weekly continuity clinic in which they follow their own patient panels with the supervision of both general neurology attendings and epileptologists as well as other sub specialists.

We do have a robust didactic curriculum that includes lectures every Wednesday and Thursday led by our child neurology attendings on a variety of topics, weekly case conferences led by the residents, monthly journal clubs, resident led board review, weekly epilepsy surgery conference and grand rounds and neuroradiology conference twice a month.

Our chief residents help design the didactic curriculum so it’s tailored to the residents needs and interests. Our residents also have the opportunity to get engaged in research during their training both through CHOC’s Neuroscience Institute and through UC Irvine.

We have faculty doing everything from bench research to translational research in clinical trials. Trainees are not only welcomed but encouraged to participate in faculty led research projects and if interested, can pursue their own projects alongside a faculty mentor.

Mentorship is another key component of our program. Each resident is assigned a faculty mentor at the beginning of the program that they meet with on a regular basis, and mentors help residents refine their areas of interest and build their future career paths, whether that be applying for fellowship, pursuing a career in academic medicine, or going into private practice through comprehensive clinical training, teaching and mentorship. By the end of training, our residents are first and foremost excellent clinicians, having had exposure to the full breadth and depth of child neurology, but also practice teachers of child neurology, ready to train future generations and on track to continue to learn, grow and develop in their own areas, be that clinical practice, advocacy, research, education, or a combination of these.

My name is Michael Kung and I’m a fifth year pediatric neurology resident here at Children’s Hospital of Orange County. I initially chose this program because of the variety of patient cases and experiences that I saw on my interview trail while I was here for interviews as well. I’m originally from Southern California and also wanted to be in close proximity to the beaches, to Disneyland, but in addition great weather and so that was all a plus.

So far, these five years have been the most exciting years that I’ve had. Faculty has been very supportive. Everyone has been very supportive in my career aspirations as well. And I feel very confident that after I graduate, I’m going to be very prepared as a pediatric neurologist as I’ve experienced many different cases and feel very comfortable with management of different pediatric neurology diseases.

I hope this video has given you a helpful glimpse into our CHOC-UCI Child Neurology Program. Thank you so much for taking the time to learn about what we do. We look forward to connecting with you soon.