Educational Activities

Teaching Conferences

The Department of Neurology schedules a wide range of educational conferences. In addition to these departmental conferences, a large number of conferences concerning the neurosciences take place within the University of Rochester Medical Center. These include conferences in the Departments of Medicine, Neurobiology and Anatomy, Psychiatry, Ophthalmology, Radiology, Pharmacology, Genetics, and others. The Child Neurology residency program works closely with the adult Neurology program to run an outstanding line-up of teaching conferences. This collaboration enhances the learning of both groups of residents by increasing exposure to a more diverse set of neurologic topics and perspectives.

Main Teaching Conferences

Child Neurology Academic Half Day

Starting July 2022, the child and adult neurology residencies have fully transitioned to an academic half day model instead of Noon conferences. We believe this strategy is superior as it allows truly protected time and space for all residents to actively learn together. It also providers residents some downtime on most days of the week to simply eat lunch. In summary, we consider this model superior to the Noon conference model for the following reasons:

• Ability for residents to focus their attention on learning without rushing to get food, trying to eat while learning, worrying about getting paged, and afternoon tasks building up. Residents have the afternoon to focus on learning the topic of the day.

Half Day Schedule

Each didactic is on Wednesday afternoon from 1 – 5 PM (after Grand Rounds, which occurs from Noon – 1 PM). The afternoon starts with residents watching 2 pre-recorded videos (no longer than 20 minutes each) on the day’s topic. Typically, residents of different levels will watch different videos geared towards their level. The videos are available for residents at any time throughout the year to review if desired. Next, the residents all get together and go through high yield cases with a faculty expert, asking questions and discussing as a group. Following that, there is a miscellaneous active session that may be related to the day’s topic (e.g. neuro-imaging workshop related to the day’s topic) or unrelated (e.g. Quality Improvement). The final hour is typically dedicated self-study time for the residents to review various suggested articles. Here is an example of an afternoon schedule:

STROKE I

Coverage

All residents are pulled off their rotations and active patient care responsibilities from 1 – 5 PM on Wednesdays. Each week there is one resident on-call to help cover the child neurology inpatient service if it gets busy, and this call is shared by all PGY-4 and PGY-5 residents (each resident is on-call every 5-6^th Wed). We have other rotators (students, off-service residents on elective) working with the inpatient attending as much as possible to minimize residents being pulled out of didactics. It is very uncommon that residents get pulled off teaching since our faculty work hard to protect their time. It happens < 10% of the time.

• Child Neurology Division Conference - faculty, residents, nurse practitioners, nurses, and medical students gather to present on various topics of their choosing throughout the year. Included in this series are patient presentations and journal article discussions. This is a favorite conference among the faculty, and is a great opportunity to learn from one another.
• Thursday Morning Patient of the Week Conference - series designed specifically for the child neurology residents to present interesting cases from the inpatient or outpatient services. It is led by Dr. Alex Paciorkowski, and is an invaluable conference for reinforcing core clinical topics as well as improving clinical skills.