Dr. Vanna Rocchi:
The fellowship that you choose to go to is going to match you the best, and I without a doubt can say that I would choose this fellowship again and again.
Dr. Vedant Kulkarni:
The ideal pediatric orthopedic fellowship program provides the full breadth of experience that a fellow might experience in independent practice, but also gives them the depth so that they can become a subspecialist in an area of their interest. And that's really what the Shriners and UC Davis Pediatric Orthopedic Fellowship does. The fellowship provides a tremendous amount of flexibility. We intentionally have just one fellow a year for 11 staff, and many of the staff have practices both at UC Davis and at Shriners. That really allows a fellow to tailor their experience even on a day-to-day, on a week-to-week level, so that they're seeing the most beneficial case for their education.
Dr. Jon Davids:
The fellowship program is embedded into the broader program here at Shriners, and the institution's mission really has three elements. One is taking care of children. The second is performing research, and the third is training healthcare professionals. And so the fellow is involved in all three of those elements during their time here with us.
Dr. Brian Haus:
The benefit of the relationship between the two institutions is that the fellow gets a really full experience. UC Davis is a very busy Level I Trauma Center. It's the main trauma center in Northern California, all the way up until the middle of Oregon, and then all the way through Nevada.
Dr. Michelle James:
The strengths of our program are the teaching ability of the faculty.
Dr. Jon Davids:
Any child who is having surgery to improve their ability to walk will have a gait study beforehand. The data is analyzed and interpreted by a multidisciplinary team. When the child comes to surgery, we review the data in the conference to justify why we are doing what we are doing. And a number of our previous fellows have developed a passion for it during their fellowship, and have gone on to jobs at other children's hospitals where they have started gait labs of their own.
Dr. Brian Haus:
Another thing that makes our fellowship very strong is our sports experience. Myself and Dr. Friel, we're both specifically fellowship trained in sports medicine. We do as complex as they get that you would get in a sports fellowship. You're going to get that as part of your peds fellowship. So our fellows come out of here, if they're interested in sports, they come out and they can do pretty much everything.
Dr. Vedant Kulkarni:
The minimum requirements for graduation from a Pediatric Orthopedic Society of North America accredited fellowship like ours is 250 cases per year. And our fellows are able to vastly exceed that number of cases, going upwards of nearly 400 cases or above during their fellowship year. Among our 11 faculty, each of them has a wealth of subspecialty experience. So that case number not only reflects a large volume of cases, it reflects a high level of complexity. And that is so important as they leave here, to have had experience with the most complex cases, so that they're able to hit the ground running from day one in their practice.
