Pediatric Radiology Fellowship Didactic Curriculum

Texas Children’s Hospital Department of Radiology has a robust lecture schedule, including daily conferences at either 7:30 a.m. or noon. Conferences are a balanced mix of didactic format and hot seat/case conferences, and many faculty employ interactive formats including polling and game show-style case competitions.

Although our lectures were previously broadcast for the radiologists and trainees at remote sites (West Campus and the Woodlands), now our entire curriculum has moved to Zoom, in light of the pandemic and need to avoid group gatherings. The Zoom lecture format allows residents, fellows and faculty to participate from any site, including home workstations. One of our best conferences, a weekly interesting case conference formerly known as “Green Dot” (referring to an old practice of putting green stickers on film jackets of interesting cases) has transitioned to a new virtual conference called “Body Buddies LIVE!” which is now scheduled twice per week, allowing faculty members and trainees to show each other interesting cases.

The Department of Radiology also participates in over 40 interdisciplinary conferences with various clinical departments, ranging in frequency from daily (Neonatology Morning Report) to weekly (Solid Tumor Rounds, Pediatric Surgery/Radiology/Pathology conference) to monthly (Pulmonary Rad-Path conference, Musculoskeletal Sarcoma conference). Radiology has a primary role in the majority of these conferences, all of which are now being presented in virtual format.

• Texas Children's Radiology Educational Calendar
• Texas Children's Radiology Interdisciplinary Conference Calendar

The fellows are also responsible for preparing and presenting interdepartmental conferences. The fellows are expected to deliver two noon conferences during the year, one hot seat conference and one didactic conference, on a topic of their own choosing.

Fellows are also provided with a specialized curriculum separate from the rotating residents and directed at the higher educational level of the fellows. Fellows’ Conferences include didactic topics presented in a “How I Do It” format; for example, in addition to a noon conference on “Interstitial Lung Disease” in children, the fellows receive a second conference on “Approach to Interstitial Lung Disease” where our renowned chest expert, Dr. Paul Guillerman, provides a step-by-step approach to interpreting high resolution chest CT, focused at the fellow level. Fellows’ conferences also include hands-on ultrasound sessions on identifying the appendix and the mesenteric vascular pedicle (for excluding midgut volvulus), hands-on fluoroscopy training with our Radiology PAs and physicists, and CT and MRI physics lectures.

A variety of fellow-level topics are offered by Fellows’ College, a series of academic and career development lectures and workshops organized by the Pediatric Fellowship program directors at Texas Children’s Hospital.  Fellows’ College not only provides outstanding lectures and group sessions by engaging lecturers from a variety of different clinical departments, but it also allows our fellows to work alongside pediatric subspecialty fellows from other departments and build collaborative relationships.

Journal clubs are held 5-6 times over the course of the fellowship year, with articles selected by faculty and presented by the fellows, concentrating on study design. Each fellow will present two articles at journal club over the course of the fellowship year.