Pediatric Neurology
Director: Anthony H. Jackson, M. D.
Duration: 4 weeks
Students per month: 1
The purpose of the Pediatric Neurology elective is to develop
the necessary skills to recognize, evaluate, and manage children
with common neurologic disorders and to enable medical students
to learn when referral to a pediatric neurologist is advisable.
The medical student’s experience will include ambulatory,
general inpatient and intensive care settings, both pediatric
and neonatal. This will occur at the Centennial Unit and Wesson
Women and Infants Unit of Baystate Medical Center, 3300 Main
Street, Ambulatory Care Center and Shriners Hospital for Crippled
Children. The medical student will work with our 3 full-time
pediatric neurologists. There will be routine interaction with
the departments of radiology, especially CT and MRI scanning,
clinical neurophysiology including electroencephalography, evoked
potentials, ambulatory EEG, polysonography, and pediatric neurosurgery.
The approach to management is multidisciplinary and necessitates
close working relationships with the Departments of Nursing,
Psychiatry, Psychology, Social Service, Neurosurgery, other
medical subspecialties and Rehabilitation including speech pathology,
audiology, occupational therapy, physical and special education.
The medical student will often be the first contact with any
consultations requested from the pediatric neurology service
in regard to hospitalized patients. Neurologic evaluation including
history and examination will be performed followed by diagnostic
formulation, discussion and recommendations made after review
with the consulting neurologist. This is a crucial aspect of
the rotation and will allow initial contact, independent thinking,
synthesis of information and immediate feedback and discussion
about the patient’s care. The medical student will be
responsible for the evaluation of all children admitted to the
Pediatric Neurology Service and will be expected to read in
depth on problems he/she is confronted with while on the rotation.
This will include not only subspecialty texts but also original
medical literature on the subject. A written examination similar
in format to Board examinations will be administered to each
medial student at the beginning and at the end of the rotation
in order to assess the medical student’s fund of knowledge
and progress. The examination will be corrected with the student
and direct feedback given.
Daily rounds on hospitalized patients including those on the
pediatric neurology service as well as consultations will be
conducted on a daily basis with review of each individual patient’s
progress, examination of the patient and participate in rotating
schedule with each of the pediatric neurologists in their office
practice seeing a wide variety of patients from birth through
21 years. These patients are seen on a daily basis.
Mandatory conferences include weekly Pediatric Grand Rounds,
weekly neuroradiology conferences, appropriate journal clubs
and any other related conferences. The reading will be directed
and assigned by the attending pediatric neurologists.
Call: No nights or weekends during this rotation.
If you are interested in our
4th year elective, please submit an application.