Curriculum

Fellows College

The common curriculum for fellows includes the Fellows College, a workshop series held every four months attended by fellows in all pediatric subspecialties. Workshop activities are grouped by fellow class.

Small-Group Workshops

The 3 year Fellows College Curriculum includes topics such as:

Handoffs and consultations as a fellows
Disclosing and reporting safety events
Designing, implementing, and analyzing quality improvement
Choosing career tracks
Preparing for the job search and what to expect in interviews
Conflict resolution
Communication and leadership skills
Wellbeing and joy in medicine
Resiliency after adverse event
Transitioning from fellow to faculty

Ethics Series

These regular lunchtime conferences cover biomedical ethics topics an interactive forum; sample topics are listed below. Discussions are led by experts from the Department of Pediatrics and the larger Northwestern community.

Deciding to forgo life-sustaining therapy, including DNR/DNI orders
Deciding to forgo artificial fluids and nutrition (and perhaps physician-aided death)
Medical futility
Truth-telling and confidentiality
Informed consent and minor assent
Organ transplantation (donation, allocation
Children as research subjects
Scientific integrity/misconduct
Relationships to commercial entities
Medical mistakes/malpractice
Impaired physicians
Medical testimony/expert witness role

Scholarship Curriculum

Fellows participate in a wide diversity of scholarship, including basic lab science, clinical, translational, medical education, ethics and advocacy. New fellows are introduced to institutional research-related resources in orientation. A grant writing workshop is offered to fellows in their second year, which culminates in submitting for the Fellow Scholar grant offered by the Department of Pediatrics.