Page 7 - GreenBook

To Our Parents

Welcome to Medical Associates Pediatrics! We are glad that you have selected
our practice for your child's health care needs. In our efforts to provide you with
the highest possible quality of care we have created this booklet for your use. It
addresses a wide variety of situations that parents may typically encounter in the
care and raising of their child(ren). This booklet is best utilized as a reference to
help answer your questions, to assist you in solving problems as they occur, and
to help you identify which problems require immediate attention. We do hope
you will take the time to read through this booklet, and while it is not a substitute
for us it will enable you to understand our basic philosophy toward the care of

children.

Our practice was established in 1973 with the goal of providing the community
with quality pediatric care. We have several pediatricians and nurse practitioners
and we are therefore able to offer you easy accessibility to this care. In addition,
each of our physicians has a particular area of interest and expertise. In this way
you are assured the very best of care for whatever medical concern your child
has. We are also pleased to provide the convenience of specialists from
multiple pediatric hospitals seeing area pediatric patients in our office.

Reach Out and Read (ROR) is a national pediatric literacy program that
emphasizes early literacy as an important part of your child's health and well
being. At every well-child check-up between the ages of 6 months and 5 years
your provider will discuss the importance of reading aloud to your child starting in
infancy, and give your child a new book to take home and keep. Our goal is to
help your child learn to love books and begin school ready to learn. Through
ROR, every child starts school with a home library of at least ten quality
children's books. Volunteer readers in the waiting room read aloud to children,
modeling for families that reading aloud is fun for the child and the adult.

We are pleased to be a "teaching practice". Our office is a site for the UMass
Medical School, Department of Pediatrics, Community-Based Residency
Program. Resident physicians have graduated from medical school, have
earned the title of Doctor and are being trained to be pediatricians. As a part of
the residency program several of our physicians supervise pediatric residents in
our office one day each week for the three years of their training. The residents
see their own patients while being supervised by one of our physicians. They
are familiar with the most recent knowledge and skills of pediatrics. We, as their
supervising doctors, are community based clinical faculty at the medical school.

We encourage you to select one of our providers to serve as your child's primary
care provider for routine care. One of our physicians is scheduled each day to
provide urgent care. This gives you the opportunity to meet many of our
providers. We also have evening and weekend hours for urgent care. We
consider ourselves to be your partner in seeing that your child stays in the very