Child Neurology

Taking on increased responsibility as you advance through our intensive child neurology rotations, you will learn to provide state-of-the-art neurological care to young patients, always in a developmentally appropriate manner.

Training in a nationally recognized pediatric care hospital in the community, you will routinely interact with our expert child neurologists, senior child neurology residents and multidisciplinary pediatric specialists.

You will be an integral part of the care team for hospital and emergency patients as well as those referred for consultations.

Initially, you will help care for infants and children with common neurological conditions.

You will gain proficiency with bedside procedures, such as lumbar puncture.

You also will develop general pediatric knowledge related to specific neurological problems, including drug interactions and side effects and neurological effects of medical and surgical disease.

You will further enhance your clinical skill set through a minimum week-long experience in our cutting-edge Long-Term Monitoring Unit as you help evaluate children with severe seizure disorders.

As a senior child neurology resident, you will acquire an advanced understanding of childhood neurologic diseases, attaining levels of competence equivalent to that of an independent, board-certified neurologist.

You will take the lead in formulating diagnostic and treatment plans and explaining them to patients and families.

You also will make effective use of multiple neurological investigations, including electromyography, nerve conduction velocity tests, electroencephalography and neuroimaging.

Throughout your child neurology training, you will become more proficient in adapting your neurological practice skills to pediatric patients.

As you assess children of all ages, you will learn how to modify the examination to a child’s developmental stage.

You will obtain complete medical histories, gathering information from patients, families, medical records and referring physicians.

With experience and guidance from our expert child neurologists, you will provide comprehensive, differential diagnoses of neurological problems, based on:

• each child’s age
• a given localization
• associated clinical, laboratory, electrophysiological and imaging findings

You will develop individualized care and follow-up plans for managing diverse neurological conditions, and will learn to adjust them for each patient’s developmental stage.

You also will hone verbal and nonverbal communication skills to relate to children at different ages, as well as parents and family members.

In addition, you will develop an awareness of social and family issues that affect childhood disorders.

You will learn from frequent dialogue with, and relevant feedback from more experienced team members, including a child neurologist, as you present and discuss your assigned patients during daily rounds.

As a senior resident, you will develop managerial skills by supervising an inpatient team, including junior and rotating residents and medical students.

During your inpatient training at Women and Children’s Hospital of Buffalo, you have the opportunity to develop multidisciplinary knowledge by attending weekly rounds with an attending child psychiatrist.

Continually developing your scientific background knowledge, you will gain an understanding of both normal and abnormal development of the nervous system through our robust didactic training.

You also will learn by actively participating in weekly child neurology conferences, where you will take your turn presenting interesting cases, as well as journal club article review sessions.

You will gradually take on more responsibility for planning and organizing these important group learning experiences.

You will encounter a wide variety of conditions in male and female pediatric patients, both inpatient and outpatient, from throughout the Western New York region, including:

• seizures
• headache
• demyelinating disorders
• infections
• developmental and genetic conditions
• neuromuscular conditions 

You will become an integral part of the care team in multiple settings — hospital wards, intensive care units, the emergency room — and provide urgent consultations wherever needed. You also will work with children in select outpatient clinics.

You will be a key part of a care team that involves:

• child neurology residents
• adult neurology residents
• rotating residents (from non-neurology specialties)
  
• medical students

All of the trainees on your team will have opportunities to interact with a multidisciplinary team of experts, including child psychiatrists, developmental pediatricians and social workers.