After completing their specialist training, many pediatricians work in outpatient settings. However, the majority of specialist training currently still takes place in children’s hospitals, thus placing a strong emphasis on the inpatient aspects of pediatric and adolescent medicine. Although the medical care of children and adolescents in private practices and hospitals is closely linked—for example, in acute care or follow-up care after a hospital stay—the two areas nevertheless encompass very different fields of activity.

Key areas of outpatient pediatrics, such as prevention (e.g., preventive check-ups and vaccinations), the continuous assessment of child development and the early detection of abnormalities, the care of chronically ill children and adolescents, networking in the social environment, and increasingly common clinical conditions (e.g., behavioral and emotional disorders, obesity, or eating disorders), are currently only inadequately represented in clinical training.

The new postgraduate training regulations address this by placing significantly greater emphasis on outpatient content. In the future, specialist training in pediatrics and adolescent medicine will therefore no longer take place exclusively in inpatient settings.