About Our Program

Valley Children’s Pediatric Hospital Medicine Fellowship program was created with the mission to train innovative physician leaders in the care of hospitalized children, who will advance the field through excellence in scholarship, advocacy, teaching, and in the provision of compassionate, high-value, evidence-based, equitable, patient and family-centered care to promote the health and well-being of all children.

Program Aims

• Clinical excellence
  • To provide exceptional clinical training grounded in high-value, evidence-based, compassionate, and equitable care, delivered in a patient- and family-centered manner across diverse settings and complex health systems.
• Scholarship & Advocacy
  • To train physician scholars and educators who improve child health and reduce health disparities through clinical research, quality improvement, advocacy, medical education, and educational scholarship.  
• Leadership
  • To cultivate leaders in the field of pediatric hospital medicine, who will work collaboratively across disciplines and within health systems to drive change.
• Well-being throughout career
  • To fostering a culture that prioritizes trainee wellness, work-life balance, and prepare future pediatric hospitalists to thrive both personally and professionally while achieving their career goals and providing exceptional care to children and families  

Well-being and Resilience

In the current healthcare environment, trainees and faculty members are at increased risk for burnout and depression. Psychological, emotional, and physical well-being are critical in the development of a competent, caring, and resilient physician. Self-care is an important component of professionalism; it is also a skill that must be learned and nurtured in the context of other aspects of fellowship training.

About Valley Children’s Hospital

Valley Children’s Hospital is a 330 bed freestanding children’s hospital and major tertiary referral center serving a 13 county region with a catchment of approximately 1.3 million children in Central California. Of the 330 total beds, 198 are dedicated to acute care. Of the approximately 12,000 annual admissions, 30-50% are to the Pediatric Hospital Medicine (PHM) service depending on the time of year. The busy census supports seven inpatient pediatrics teams, which flexes to eight during times of high census. Our vast catchment area and position as both a community focused and also tertiary care facility lead to an incredibly diverse and abundant patient population with rich variety of disease processes and acuity.

The large volume and high census with corresponding need for extensive hospitalist coverage allows for significant redundancy in clinical learning opportunities. Fellows spend time on the teaching service throughout their training, with intentional scheduling to ensure only one fellow on per week. Fellows have graduated expectations with respect to teaching, supervision and autonomy on the resident teaching service, and scheduling is done intentionally to maximize clinical learning opportunities and minimize competition. The significant time the pediatric learners spend on the inpatient services, combined with the flexibility afforded by so many dedicated hospitalist teams.