Individualized Residency Pathways

As a component of categorical pediatric training, every resident has six months of protected rotations to individualize their training experience. To help facilitate career development, Cincinnati Children’s offers six unique pathways for this protected time.

Each pathway has its own points of emphasis. Residents learn the finer points of their chosen path’s specialties and engage in hands-on experiences that thoroughly prepare them for tasks and situations they will encounter in their careers.

Primary Care Pathway

The Pediatric Primary Care Pathway trains physicians in the principles, knowledge, and skills necessary for careers in primary care pediatrics, academic general pediatrics, or advocacy.

The Pathway Emphasizes:

• Health maintenance supervision, preventive medicine, and ill-child care in the context of pediatric primary care
• Comprehensive, coordinated care of chronically ill and multiply handicapped children
• Management of social issues such as poverty, ethnic diversity, and medically under-served populations
• Behavioral and developmental issues such as school-related problems and family interactions
• Additional outpatient experience at the resident’s continuity site
• Additional normal newborn experience
• Emphasis on behavioral and developmental pediatrics, community-based healthcare agencies and activities, child advocacy, and child abuse

During all three years of the program, residents in this pathway will be able to spend a significant amount of time in community and hospital-based healthcare sites and attend regularly held roundtables and noon conferences that focus on the delivery of primary care and primary care-related topics.

Research Pathway

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center is strongly committed to the career development of our trainees. We’ve been very successful in helping young physicians become productive and independently contributing investigators. Explore opportunities with us for pediatric research.

Outstanding Support Capabilities

Our investigators are experts in the areas of clinical, translational, and basic science research. Underlying basic science themes include developmental biology, the study of normal and altered growth, and differentiation of tissues.

The Research Foundation has put core support capabilities in place for both basic and clinical research that will allow young investigators to successfully engage in projects, with or without extensive research experience. These core capabilities include:

• Transgenic mouse facility
• Protein analysis
• Morphologic assessment
• Bioinformatics
• Genomics
• Proteomics
• State-of-the-art animal facility
• Imaging research facility
• Biostatistics section
• Clinical effectiveness research capability
• Epidemiologic expertise
• An NIH-funded Clinical Research Center
• An academic research organization that facilitates pharmacologic clinical trials and other studies involving human subjects

Research Opportunities

If you’re interested in an academic career and research experience (basic science, clinical, education), you will be paired with a faculty mentor and will be encouraged to develop an individualized curriculum. This will allow you to become an excellent clinician and maintain your research skills. A unique internal grant, the RISE Award, has been created to facilitate resident research and acquisition of funding.

ABP-Approved Pathways

In addition to the individualized residency Research Pathway, residents also have the opportunity to pursue an intensive research pathway through the American Board of Pediatrics: The Integrated Research Pathway and the Accelerated Research Pathway.

Global Health Pathway

The Global Health Pathway at Cincinnati Children’s offers a unique opportunity for residents to gain additional training in global child health. Participants in the Global Health (GH) Pathway will have residency schedules tailored to participate in various global health experiences. They will work alongside global health mentors to design and complete viable internationally-focused research projects, with the long-term goal of becoming leaders in the field of global child health.

Application Process

The GH Pathway application will be sent to all matched interns following Match Day. Applications will be reviewed by the GH Pathway Steering Committee and 5-8 residents will be selected prior to the start of intern year.

Components and Benefits of GH Pathway

• Monthly Global Health Pathway meetings with didactic and interactive educational sessions
• Financial support to allow for short-term global health travel electives in the second and third years
• Common rotation sites: Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Dominican Republic, Indian Health Services
• Global health-focused Advocacy rotation during intern year
• Quarterly GREAT (Global Research, Education, Advocacy and Training) meetings, which are evening social events hosted by global health faculty
• Completion of a Global Health scholarly project with mentorship from Pathway faculty
• Opportunity to apply for substantial research funding through the Global Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) award, designed to encourage global health research during residency

Contact Us

For more information about the Pathway, please feel free to email Dr. Russell Ware, Dr. Elizabeth Schlaudecker, or Dr. Rachel Bensman.

Learn more about Global Health at Cincinnati Children’s.

Acute Care Pathway

This pathway was created for residents interested in a career in critical care (PICU, NICU) or emergency medicine. Faculty from these sub-specialties have developed a menu of potential rotation experiences that may be beneficial to residents interested in this career pathway. The six individualized units will be chosen based on the resident’s interests as well as input from faculty advisors, mentors and residency leadership. These experiences may be used to expose the resident to different areas of critical care with an additional emphasis on procedures.

Subspecialty Pathway

This pathway was created for residents interested in sub-specialty fellowships, not including the acute care fellowships. Faculty from multiple clinical and research divisions have developed a menu of potential rotation experiences that may be beneficial to residents interested in this career pathway and the sub-specialties that it includes. The six individualized units will be chosen based on the specific sub-specialty interests of the resident as well as input from faculty advisors, mentors, and residency leadership. These experiences will expose the resident to a variety of aspects of pediatrics important to each field. Examples include: pulmonology, nephrology, hematology-oncology, cardiology, infectious disease, or endocrinology among others.

Hospitalist Pathway

This pathway was created for residents interested in a career in hospital medicine. Faculty from our Hospital Medicine division have developed a menu of potential rotation experiences that may be beneficial to residents interested in this career pathway. The six individualized units will be chosen based on the interests of the resident as well as input from faculty advisors, mentors, and residency leadership. These experiences will expose the resident to a variety of aspects of general pediatrics that are important for inpatient medicine.