Resident Continuity Clinic

Continuity Clinic provides residents a longitudinal learning experience within residency and an opportunity to serve as the primary care provider for a panel of patients over the residency training experience. In continuity clinic, residents learn how to provide optimal preventive care and management of common and less common pediatric disease processes. Important elements of this learning experience include enhancing skills in interviewing and providing anticipatory guidance, establishing rapport with children and their families, understanding and implementing preventive health modalities, learning about typical and atypical growth and development and caring for children with acute and chronic illnesses. In our continuity clinics, resident physicians have the opportunity to provide care for a wide range of patients from healthy newborns to children with complex medical and/or mental health concerns. Supporting patients and their families with family-centered, culturally competent care and providing personalized resources and plans for patients and their families is a core piece of the training experience in continuity clinic. 

Resident physicians are supported by a consistent and dedicated team of expert Attending Physicians in the Division of Advanced General Pediatrics and Primary Care and Community Based Primary Care. Residents are part of a close-knit multidisciplinary team in clinic, which includes our patient service representatives, medical assistants, nurses, social workers and collaborate care teams such as our collaborative care psychiatry team. During each continuity clinic session there is protected time built in with weekly didactics on both “bread and butter” and cutting edge general pediatric topics. 

Our continuity clinic program takes place at two different Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago sites: Lurie Children’s Pediatrics at Deming and Lurie Children’s Pediatrics at Uptown. The clinics are open five days each week and residents and faculty provide support for families outside of regular clinic hours through a parent pager that is accessible to all of our patients for urgent concerns. The Deming site has eight resident continuity clinic sessions per week. Uptown has four resident continuity clinic sessions per week. As Uptown is a diverse northside neighborhood with a large immigrant population, trainees with an interest in underserved populations may choose to request this clinic placement. 

Residents attend their own outpatient primary care continuity clinic on a regular basis throughout residency training. In this setting, residents are the primary care physicians for their own panel of patients over a three-year period and develop strong, long-lasting relationships with families. This is one of the most rewarding aspects of residency training. The residents and faculty in each clinic become supportive families within the larger residency program and are often seen spending time together outside of clinic at dinner parties, beach picnic gatherings, and book clubs. Continuity clinic groups partner together in multidisciplinary Quality Improvement, Advocacy and/or Research projects to improve the health of our patients within the walls of our clinics and hospital and in the neighborhoods where our patients live, learn and play.