This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
Rarely does a week go by when a faculty member or pediatrie resident ofmy department does not make a slightly under handed comment concerning the amount of time house staff spend on neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) rotations. The range of critiques is quite wide but most often focuses on why residents spend so much time caring for patients whose weight in grams is often in three digits, and whose disease processes are few in number and are usually known by their three letter abbreviations (RDS, BPD, NEC, PDA, etc). I am regularly asked why residents spend apparently inordinate amounts of time (both in daytime "required" rotations and night call) in the NICU when the great majority of house staff will not provide this type ofcare once they complete residency training.
I believe that the overwhelming majority of neonatologists involved in postgraduate medical education realize that their goal is not to