Pediatrics Residency Columbia - Program Details

Of the 175,000-plus infants, children and adolescents treated at Prisma Health Richland Hospital each year, a large number are admitted to our Children's Hospital as inpatients.

Our residency program provides a comprehensive, well-rounded experience in general and subspecialty pediatrics as well as neonatal services. Your level of responsibility and autonomy increases with each residency year.

First-year residents, directed by senior residents and faculty, perform diagnostic procedures and formulate therapeutic plans. At any given time, a PGY 1 resident on inpatient service will manage an average of five to seven patients. Meanwhile PGY 2 and PGY 3 residents provide oversight, teaching, and patient care in an increasingly dependent fashion according to their training.  

The inpatient service, directed by full-time academic pediatric hospitalists, offers a broad and diverse patient mix. Contributing to the inpatient diversity are referrals from a 17-county area, patients from the emergency department, Children's Hospital Outpatient Center, admissions of pediatric faculty subspecialists, and admissions from private pediatricians in the community. Residents along with pediatric hospital medicine providers direct care with the subspecialist serving as a consultant.

Pediatric surgical specialists perform more than 4,000 procedures per year in a variety of different surgical subspecialties including pediatric neurosurgery, pediatric urology, pediatric orthopedics, and pediatric ENT. Residents have the opportunity to select rotations in any of the pediatric subspecialty areas.

Critical to successful pediatric training, ambulatory experience is a strong aspect of our pediatric residency. The Children's Hospital Outpatient Center has about 16,000 visits each year and is staffed by general pediatricians. Operating under the group practice model, the center provides continuity between patients, residents and faculty. 

Supplementing this experience are our pediatric specialty clinics:

• Adolescent and school-based clinics.
• Allergy and immunology.
• Behavioral/child psychiatry.
• Cardiology.
• Child abuse.
• Pediatric orthopedics.
• Developmental and behavioral.
• Endocrinology.
• Gastroenterology.
• Genetics.
• Hemophilia and sickle cell clinics.
• Infectious disease.
• Myelodysplasia,
• Nephrology.
• Neurology.
• Otolaryngology.
• Pulmonology.
• Rheumatology.
• Sports medicine.
• Urology.

The adolescent rotation is a unique one-month structured educational experience during your second year providing residents the opportunity to see teenage patients in a variety of different settings.

Experiences include:

• Department of Juvenile Justice – health needs of incarcerated youth.
• Teen clinic – sexually transmitted diseases and a variety of gynecologic diseases.
• Rheumatology clinic.
• Sports medicine clinics – evaluating adolescents with a variety of sports medicine related conditions including concussion.

The 18-bed, Level I Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) handles more than 1,000 admissions per year.  Training entails primary management of the patients with supervision by in-house full-time intensivists. Residents have the opportunity to attain proficiency in multiple procedures including arterial and venous line placement, airway and ventilator management, and monitoring and stabilizing critically ill patients. A self-sufficient transport system enhances acute care training.

Prisma Health Richland Hospital is home to a pediatric transport team of pediatric critical-care nurses, respiratory therapists and EMS support personnel. The team uses a mobile critical care transport unit as well as air ambulance service to transport critically ill and injured infants and pediatric patients from a 17-county referral area to the Prisma Health Children's Hospital PICU.

The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), along with the special care and newborn nurseries, handles more than 2,000 in-house deliveries and about 200 neonatal transports each year. Both provide comprehensive primary and tertiary care to more than 800 NICU admissions each year.

In addition to training one-on-one with neonatologists who conduct daily rounds and provide teaching sessions, residents work with a team of nurse practitioners, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, and nutritionists to provide care to neonates.

NICU services include:

• 24-hour in-house neonatologists.
• ECMO program, one of two hospitals in South Carolina with this life-saving equipment.
• High frequency ventilators and nitric oxide therapy.
• "Stork"-Speedy Transport of Risky Kids-South Carolina's first regional neonatal transport ambulance.

Hematology/Oncology services provide inpatient care for more than 700 children and adolescents annually. Our team sees about 35 percent of all newly diagnosed cancer patients in South Carolina, with an average inpatient census of five. In the Children's Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders, children with hemophilia and sickle cell disease are followed by the state’s only federally qualified Hemophilia Center and the largest Comprehensive Sickle Cell care center in South Carolina.

On the inpatient rotation occuring during the first and second year, residents have daily inpatient rounds with the hematology/oncology attending physician, pharmacists, and patient care coordinator. Teaching focuses on comprehensive care and addresses issues relevant to medical, psychosocial, educational and recreational health.

Within Prisma Health Richland Hospital's emergency department is a separate pediatric ED that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week seeing 33,000 patients on average yearly. Training in Pediatric ER is one-on-one with on-site faculty. This rotation occuring during the second and third year covers all facets of pediatric medicine, emphasizing efficient triage, stabilization and treatment of children and adolescents with acute and emergent conditions.  Residents duirng this rotation are provided the opportunity to learn and practice pediatric bedside ultrasound.

In addition, each year pediatric residents are able to rotate within the emergency medicine in a unique wilderness medicine rotation.  

Advocacy at the Prisma Health Pediatric Residency  Program in Columbia takes on a variety of different meanings and paths all leading back to creating meaningful impact for the children of South Carolina.

During training, residents are asked to take part in a variety of advocacy experiences including legislative advocacy (both state and national), educational advocacy, community advocacy, and school based advocacy (including being designated as the "School Doc" through our Palmetto Pals collaborative). Doing the right thing for kids is always easy and helping others to see what that right thing is can be fun and rewarding as well!sma Health - Columbia pediatric residency takes on a variety of different meanings and paths all leading back to creating meaningful impact for the children of South Carolina. During training residents are asked to take part in a variety of advocacy experiences including legislative advocacy (both state and national), educational advocacy, community advocacy, and school based advocacy (including being designated as the "School Doc" through our Palmetto Pals collaborative). Doing the right thing for kids is always easy and helping others to see what that right thing is can be fun and rewarding as well!

• S.C. Safe Kids – an organization dedicated to education and implementation of child safety measures in the community.
• Legislative activity with attendance at State Advocacy Day here at the South Carolina Statehouse.
• Camps attendance such as Camp Kemo, where residents serve as the medical staff for attending campers.
• Palmetto PALS – Residents are paired with health program involvement in local schools
• Meeting attendance at the South Carolina AAP meeting as a 3^rd year resident with participation in resident section and committee meetings.
• CHAMPS – Medico-legal partnership with the University Of South Carolina School Of Law to review and discuss pediatric medico-legal issues and areas for improvement.

Residents can choose from a wide range of pediatric electives, including:

• Allergy/immunology.
• Cardiology.
• Child abuse.
• Critical care/anesthesiology.
• Developmental/behavioral pediatrics.
• Emergency medicine.
• Endocrinology.
• Gastroenterology.
• Genetics.
• Hematology/oncology.
• Infectious disease.
• Nephrology.
• Neurology.
• Newborn nursery.
• Orthopedics.
• Otolaryngology.
• Pediatric palliative care
• Physical medicine and rehabilitation.
• Private practice/community health.
• Psychiatry.
• Pulmonology.
• Radiology.
• Research.
• Rheumatology.
• Surgery.
• Wilderness medicine.

Other electives can be pursued by special arrangements with the faculty.