Drexel University College of Medicine is very fortunate to have St. Christopher's Hospital for Children as an academic affiliate teaching pediatric care. St. Christopher's Hospital for Children was founded in 1875, when it opened as a one-room dispensary for the mill workers' children of the Kensington area of Philadelphia. Today St. Christopher's is a 189-bed hospital providing cutting-edge medical services to children across the Greater Philadelphia area and has been at the forefront of many areas of pediatric medicine.
With a vast range of specialty services and programs including a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center, Level IIIC Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Heart Center, Cystic Fibrosis Center, Orthopaedics, Full-Service General Surgery Program including minimally invasive abdominal and thoracic Surgery, and the only dedicated pediatric burn center in the area, St. Christopher's is a regional referral center for complex pediatric conditions.
Because children have different health care needs than adults, St. Christopher's is staffed by physicians who have concentrated on studying and then practicing just one area of medicine from a pediatric perspective. The team's nearly 200 pediatric specialists combine expert general pediatric care with more than 30 different pediatric subspecialty areas. Additionally, St. Christopher's Hospital holds Magnet® status, which is one of the nation's highest forms of recognition for nursing excellence.
In addition to providing care for complex conditions, St. Christopher's provides routine pediatric care as well as care for many children with complex conditions. In order to make first-class pediatric care easily accessible, St. Christopher's has opened four pediatric primary care practices and five multispecialty care centers in the Philadelphia suburbs and throughout the Delaware Valley.