Education

The overall educational purpose of this program is to assist in the development of clinical and research skills among the future leaders of multidisciplinary prenatal pediatrics at Children’s National Hospital and beyond. This is achieved by developing in the trainee the expertise and special diagnostic skills needed for rigorous study of the mechanisms and manifestations of disorders in the fetus and newborn, as well as of the responses to such injury and its long-term outcome.

The approach to clinical and research training occurs through intense immersion in the Zickler Family Prenatal Pediatrics Institute, including training in the diagnosis, counseling, and management of high-risk fetuses in general, with particular focus on the trainee’s primary discipline.

The program has a clinical component for the duration of the fellowship, which will be most intensive during year one, and in the second year focuses primarily on the trainees’ principal discipline. Patient care responsibilities include evaluation and supervised counseling of pregnant couples with prenatal concerns. These evaluations occur in the multidisciplinary prenatal care clinic. Trainees are required to attend weekly fetal imaging sessions. Finally, patients admitted to Children's National after fetal diagnosis, continue to be followed by the trainee. The trainee will also be responsible for the outpatient follow-up of cases seen in the prenatal program by the trainee’s primary discipline.

A didactic component is primarily in the form of presentations of specific topics as part of the weekly prenatal and transitional medicine meetings; in addition to attending, the trainee is also be expected to make formal presentations at these didactic sessions.