Welcome from Program Directors
Jonathan W. Mink, M.D., Ph.D.
Program Director
Thank you for your interest in Child Neurology residency training at the Golisano Children’s Hospital at the University of Rochester. The University of Rochester Medical Center has a long tradition of excellence in education, patient care, and research. More than 80 years ago, well- known educator Abraham Flexner’s revolutionary report, Medical Education in the United States and Canada, proposed a vision of university-based medical education that would support the powerful interaction of three distinct but interrelated missions: scientific inquiry, learning, and patient care. When he looked to establish a medical school based on his philosophy in New York, Flexner told then University President Rush Rhees that the University of Rochester presented an ideal place for “a medical school of the highest order.” Leadership in medical education and research remains a hallmark of the University today.
The University of Rochester, Department of Neurology has a long prestigious tradition as a top institution for neurological care and education. The department currently has 95 full-time faculty, as well as 17 voluntary and 11 adjunct faculty. In 2011, extramural research support totaled $31.3 million, and the department has consistently ranked within the top 6 nationally in NIH research funding. Yet rather than rest on its laurels, the department is again aggressively expanding further, with a total of 22 new faculty recruits anticipated over the next 5 years, as part of the University of Rochester Medical Center's strategic plan for 2009-13.
Robert Thompson Stone, M.D.
Associate Program Director
Child Neurology at the University of Rochester has a rich tradition dating back to the 1940s and Dr. Wilbur Smith, an MD with special expertise in neuroanatomy who had had a year’s additional training in child neurology at Queen Square, London. A charismatic and enthusiastic teacher, Dr.Smith inspired several medical students to enter child neurology. Among them were Drs. Philip Dodge and Patrick Bray, both of whom would become leaders in this rapidly growing subspecialty. The Division of Child Neurology was officially established in 1968 with the recruitment of Dr. Frederick Horner, the first board-certified child neurologist to work at the University of Rochester. Dr. Horner was appointed chief of the new Division of Child Neurology, then part of Department of Pediatrics. In the past 10 years, the Child Neurology Division has undergone substantial expansion. The Child Neurology Residency program was re-established in, and has quickly risen to become one of the top programs in the country. The division includes 10 primary faculty with diverse clinical and research interests. We average over 5000 outpatient visits per year with patients referred from all areas of upstate and western New York, including Buffalo and Syracuse. In the past year, patients have come from as far as California, Texas, Florida, and Canada for consultation. We average over 300 inpatient consultations each year and admit an additional 100-150 patients. The Pediatric Neurology Service covers 72 pediatric beds, 22 pediatric intensive care unit beds, and 52 neonatal intensive care unit bassinets. Most excitingly, the URMC is building a new dedicated children’s hospital adjacent to Strong Memorial Hospital. It will include a new, 60-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), pediatric imaging, increased private pediatric beds, and a new pediatric intensive care unit. This new children’s hospital is set to be completed by 2015.
The program emphasizes excellence in clinical neurology and has produced academic neurologists, practitioners of neurology, researchers, and teachers. The primary goal of the training program is to provide excellent clinical training in the practice of neurology. Important secondary goals are to give the residents ample opportunities to take part in clinical research, and to provide a sound fund of knowledge in the neurosciences that could be used to develop an investigative career. To best achieve this goal, we support the notion of a flexible residency such that residents can choose different paths towards the end of their training based on their future career goals.
