Workforce
The Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education (CHGME) is a bipartisan program that was established in 1999 because Congress recognized that a dedicated source of support for training in children’s hospitals was necessary to strengthen the pediatric workforce. It is the only federal program devoted to the training of pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists.
Beyond sustaining a critical supply of pediatric doctors, CHGME has enabled children’s hospitals and their residents to provide significant value to the patients and communities they serve by advancing the quality of pediatric medical education, providing care for vulnerable and underserved children, and pioneering community-based pediatric training.
The residents and fellows whose training is supported by CHGME provide critical access to care for children in rural and urban underserved communities, provide medical homes, and address heath care disparities. Close to two-thirds of CHGME-funded physicians who completed their training programs choose to remain and practice in the state where they completed their residency.
CHGME is critical to the national goal of ensuring comprehensive and timely access to care for America’s children, including children in military families and those in underserved rural and urban communities.
A Glimpse into the Pediatric Workforce | Child Life Specialist
For children and teens, serious diagnoses, complicated procedures, and long hospital stays can be confusing and anxiety inducing. That’s why children’s hospitals employ child life specialists. From facilitating play that allows kids to feel like kids to helping patients know what to expect every step of the way, child life specialists do everything they can to make children and teen’s time in children’s hospitals as comfortable as possible.
