Postgraduate education for pediatricians.

Thank you very much for inviting me to start off the discussions today on post-graduate medical education. Historically post-graduate education has always been grounded in the perception of the specific health care needs of patients. Therefore, I'm first going to address some of the more important health care needs of children, emphasizing the unmet needs which future pediatricians must be prepared to meet. Then I'd like to move on from these discrete problems to several very difficult fundamental challenges that cut across rotations and the residency years. There is a saying attributed to Mark Twain that might well have been directed to us as educators. "It is noble to teach oneself; it is still nobler to teach others-and a lot more trouble." These cross-cutting challenges are a lot of trouble to address.