Group well-child care offers unique opportunities for patient education

By using a group process, health educators can greatly increase the cost effectiveness of well-child care. Benefits of group care, compared with traditional well-child care, include increased time for patient education, prolonged observation of parent-child interactions, the ability to observe children with their peers, and the opportunity to employ a broad variety of teaching techniques, such as role-modeling. This paper describes the author's 15 years of experience using this model, illustrating with examples the advantages of group well-child care.