Scholarly Project Curriculum | Pediatric Residency Program | Academic Programs | Department of Pediatrics | UC Davis Health

In the first year of residency, residents are introduced to four potential scholarly focus areas:

• Research: Residents are exposed to the fundamentals of research through journal club discussions and research workshop sessions held during block didactic conferences.  Workshop sessions include topics such as study design, formulation of specific aims, how to write an abstract, and how to present data in a poster.
• Quality Improvement & Patient Safety (QIPS): Residents are introduced to the concepts of QIPS through a longitudinal QIPS curriculum and hands-on QIPS project.
• Medical Education: Residents are introduced to resident-as-teacher educational modules beginning in intern orientation and throughout all three years of residency during retreats and block didactic conferences.
• Community Health and Advocacy: First-year residents have a 1-month introduction to community health and advocacy.

In the winter/spring of Year 1, first-year residents work with a faculty mentor to design a scholarly project in one of the four focus areas. The Resident Scholarly Oversight Committee provides feedback on the project proposal to help the resident be successful.

Residents are given 4-weeks in Year 2 and 4-weeks in Year 3 to develop, implement and evaluate their scholarly project.  Residents present annually at a Work-in-Progress session to give and receive peer and faculty feedback on how to improve their project.

In May of Year 3, all senior residents present an abstract and poster based on their scholarly project at our annual Department of Pediatrics Research Symposium.

Residents have disseminated their scholarly work at regional, national, and international conferences through poster and platform presentations and through peer-reviewed publications.  In addition, residents have been mentored by faculty to successfully apply for UC Davis resident/fellow research grants and external grants, including American Academy of Pediatrics CATCH grants and Academic Pediatric Association Young Investigator Awards.