Cedars INfectious Disease

General Information

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Welcome to your Pediatric Infectious Disease elective at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. During your rotation we hope that you will be exposed to a variety of inpatient and outpatient ID issues, and that you learn the general approach to health issues involving infection and prevention. Regardless of the career path you choose in medicine, you will no doubt be faced with patients suffering from infections. Learning the best way to treat those infections, be judicious with antibiotics, prevent them from spreading to others, and seek help will serve you well no matter your path.

 

Schedule

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• Inpatient rounds: Monday through Friday, at a time to be specified by the attending on service- we will try our best to work around your clinic and call schedule.

• Divisional ID Meeting: Thursday’s usually late morning or early afternoon depending on the schedule. Location varies by week.

• Combined ID rounds: Didactic case presentations in combination with adult ID and maternal-fetal medicine: Monthly: Second Thursdays at 1:00pm, location varies.

• City-wide ID rounds: 3 times a year there are city wide meetings between Cedars, UCLA, CHLA, and community pediatric ID members where we discuss cases and research presentations. They are usually around 4:30-7pm. We will let you know if one happens during your rotation. It is optional to attend but recommended.

• Other conferences:

  • Morning reports: The general peds team has morning report at 8:00am most days. It is recommended that sub-Is interested in the UCLA pediatric program join the resident team for teaching sessions. Residents should if possible.

  • Pediatric Grand Rounds & Pediatric Clinical Case Conference: Thursdays 8:00: Harvey Morse Auditorium.

  • Daily noon conference: Peds Conference Room 12:15pm

  • “Miller” rounds: Every other Thursday: required for 4th year medical students, optional for residents.

 

 

Clinical Responsibilities for 4th year students and residents

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Consultations:

You will be notified of consultations by the attending on service or directly by the house staff. Prior to seeing the patient you should speak with the referring physician (frequently an intern or resident) regarding the reason for the consultation.  Following discussion and identification of the infectious diseases questions, you should review laboratories, cultures and radiologic studies, and do a complete physical examination. If the patient has been at another hospital, you should obtain relevant information from the laboratory there; records should be faxed when possible.

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After evaluating the patient and reviewing the chart you should be ready to present the patient to the attending. Your presentation should include a history of present illness, summary of the hospital course, relevant past medical history, social history, risk factors, followed by a physical exam and assessment and your recommendations (Don’t worry if you get them wrong! Having a plan you’ve thought through and reasoned out is an important process, and not everything has a right answer.)

 

After discussing the case and seeing the patient with the ID team, you should communicate the recommendations verbally to the general pediatric team, try to field their questions (ask for help if you don’t know the answer!), and write up your consult note. A template can be found in CS-link: “.DLPEDSIDCONSULT”.

 

Follow up on prior consults:

Each morning before you meet with your attending you should round on the prior patients that you saw before and were assigned. You should find out updates particularly as they relate to ID, new labs, and come up with your recommendations for the day. After rounding with the team, you should again verbally communicate your updated recommendations to the team for your patients and write up your daily follow-up note.

 

Outpatient Clinic:

As part of your ID rotation, there are also frequently outpatient clinic referrals. Your attending will let you know when there are clinic patients to see as they occur variably during the week, and you may additionally see clinic patients with other ID attendings who may have interesting cases that week, particularly if the inpatient service is reasonably quiet.

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Additional Information

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Microbiology laboratory:

We work closely with the microbiology lab. Schedules of all involved permitting, we will try to take you on a tour of the micro lab especially if you are interested in seeing the latest tools available in diagnosing and culturing organisms.

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Reading:

Reading is crucial to success. That’s as true in medicine, as it is in most areas of civilization and society. Many of the principles and practices of medicine will change throughout your career and the only way you’ll know is if you keep reading and learning new things. We encourage you to read every day. During this elective, your reading should ideally focus on infectious diseases especially as they relate to patients you’ve just seen. Textbooks and UpToDate (and, dare I admit, sometimes even Wikipedia) are excellent initial resources, but we’d also encourage you to delve a little deeper and find and explore the primary research (e.g. via Pubmed, Google, etc) that drove that Chapter’s author’s recommendations.

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Expectations:

We have a few but important expectations for you on this rotation.

1. That you take excellent care of your patients. That means knowing what’s going on with them, and communicating recommendations accurately and effectively with the teams involved in their care.

2. That you let us know your schedule ahead of time, days off, calls, etc so we can adequately plan.

3. That you investigate and read the latest articles as they relate to your patients and teach us something back.

4. Which means we want a short presentation (10-15minutes) on an ID or related topic of your choosing before the end of your rotation (especially true for the 4th year medical students)

 

Evaluations:

The attending physician(s) on service will evaluate your performance during your rotation. In addition, we would greatly appreciate your candid evaluation of the faculty's teaching. 

 

Again, welcome to your pediatric ID elective. We hope that it will be an educational and enjoyable rotation. 

 

Vik Anand, MD PhD

George Liu, MD PhD

Moshe Arditi, MD

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