KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Knoxville area will soon be home to a class of medical students learning how to treat young children after two medical organizations partnered to create a pediatric residency program.
A release said the East Tennessee Children's Hospital partnered with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center's Graduate School of Medicine to launch the program. It also said it would re-establish formal pediatric training for the Knoxville area for the first time in around 25 years.
It's also the first program of its kind between the two organizations, and the first class of residents is expected to arrive in July 2027. The program will ultimately bring in up to 24 residents annually.
A release said the children's hospital and the graduate school of medicine previously worked together on clinical rotations of residents for family medicine, urology and general or oral surgery. However, those rotations focused only on adult medicine.
The new pediatric program is expected to take residents through 36 months of training, as they seek to become licensed and board-certified pediatricians.
"Pediatricians, and all training doctors, tend to stay where they do their training. So, we wanna be able to grow our community depth of pediatric physicians for the future," said Suzanna Rybczynski, the chief medical officer at the East Tennessee Children's Hospital.