An Outpatient-Oriented Pediatric Residency

Reappraisal and updating of residency training programs is required to meet the needs of the physician preparing for a career in pediatrics. Emphasis on pediatric inpatient services has prepared physicians to handle acute illness in the hospital but has provided little experience with the more usual problems of pediatrics.

Although rational for the period of "curative" pediatrics when most patients had acute infectious illness or nutritional disease, this type of training is no longer adequate. The majority of hospitalized children now belong in the group of "study" cases with chronic medical or surgical illness. Not only has there been this change in the character of the inpatient population in the past decade, but there has also been a coincident modification of the role of the practicing pediatrician who is now responsible for promoting health as well as for treating or preventing organic illness. Thus, the continued stress on inpatients for