Overview

Year 1
  • Inpatient Infectious Diseases Consultation Service – 8 months
  • Research Preparation - 1 month
  • Infection Prevention/Antimicrobial Stewardship – 1 month
  • HIV clinic – 1 month
  • Microbiology/Travel Medicine/Wound Care – 1 month
Year 2
  • Inpatient Infectious Diseases Consultation Service – 4 months
  • Research – 4 months
  • Transplant Infectious Disease – 1 month
  • Electives (ex. Community-based ID [“Street” Medicine], further rotations in travel medicine and/or HIV/outpatient clinic, additional research blocks, additional wound care rotations) – 3 months

Year 1 Fellowship Rotations

Inpatient Infectious Diseases Consultation Service

Rotation goals and objectives:

  • Establish a solid foundation in diagnostic and therapeutic skills and the approach to the patient while providing hospital‐based infectious disease consultation services for patients with a diverse set of bacterial, viral, fungal, and parasitic infections
  • Continue to increase the fund of knowledge of internal medicine
  • Expand the knowledge base in anti‐infective agents including their pharmacology, need for modification or avoidance in specific patient populations, and cost‐effective prescribing
  • Develop teaching skills as the fellow works with residents, medical students, and other team members
  • Develop administrative skills leading members of the infectious disease consult team, preparing for infectious disease conferences, and serving as the point person who is contacted by care givers in other specialties or teams

Rotation length: 8 months during the first year

Infectious Prevention/Antimicrobial Stewardship

Rotation goals and objectives:

  • Recognize the distinction between the strict CDC definition of particular types of hospital infections and the definition as it occurs in medical practice
  • Learn how to define (Case Definition) and evaluate if there is an outbreak occurring and how to approach this decision using resources of the infection preventionists, microbiology laboratory, and other partners
  • Biostatistics and their proper use to guide decisions in infection prevention and control
  • Working with an interdisciplinary team that includes infectious diseases, pharmacy, microbiology, and other stakeholders for continuous quality improvement and education on antibiotics
  • Serve, as an educator and as a coalition‐builder on antibiotics to ensure that there can be broad acceptance of a logical approach to the use of antibiotics
  • It is preferable to be seen as a colleague who wishes to improve the care of the patients rather than as a member of an “antibiotic police force” in a medical center. This requires working with key thought leaders.

Rotation length: 1 month during the first year

HIV Clinic

Rotation goals and objectives:

  • Learn the basis of antiretroviral therapy and be able to individualize it for different patients
  • Become an educated and logical user of tests in order to effectively care for patients who are infected with HIV
  • Effectively work with the patient and be able to recognize when there are social and other resources available to the patient
  • Work in a Ryan White‐funded HIV Clinic and be aware of when there are opportunities for individual patients to be considered for clinical trials Rotation Length

Rotation length: 1 month during the first year

Microbiology/Travel Medicine/Wound Care

Rotation goals and objectives:

  • Obtain a genuine understanding of culture‐based, molecular, and other diagnostic testing – and their strengths and weaknesses
  • In Travel Medicine, understand the immunization benefits and risks for travel, food, water, insect, tick, violence, and other issues to be discussed with travelers prior to their planned trip as you learn of specific infectious (e.g., malaria) and noninfectious (e.g., mountain sickness) issues for travel to specific locations.
  • Evaluation of individuals who present following travel requires the fellow to obtain a detailed travel, exposure, and activity history
  • Understand the basis of wound care including determining the stage of a wound, its dimensions, its character, appropriate types of dressings, potential need for surgical debridement, properly obtaining cultures only when these will be of help, and when hyperbaric oxygen, vascular studies, and transcutaneous oxygen tension can help manage the patient’s care.

Rotation length: 1 month during the first year

Year 2 Fellowship Rotations

Inpatient Infectious Diseases Consultation Service

Rotation goals and objectives:

  • Increase the breadth and depth of diagnostic and therapeutic skills while providing hospital‐based infectious disease consultation services at a level that reflects a fund of knowledge that will establish that the fellow has genuine expertise in infectious diseases.
  • Continue to increase the fund of knowledge of internal medicine while gaining knowledge in surgical specialties from working with surgical and post‐operative patients who have infectious disease issues
  • Expand the knowledge base in anti‐infective agents including their pharmacology, need for modification or avoidance in specific patient populations, and cost effective prescribing
  • Develop teaching skills as the fellow works with residents, medical students, and other team members
  • Develop administrative skills leading members of the infectious disease consult team, preparing for infectious disease conferences, and serving as the point person who is contacted by care givers in other specialties or teams

Rotation length: 4 months

Research

Rotation goals and objectives:

  • Select a project that is of interest and, with your research mentor, work to see it through from its planning and design to, ideally, its conclusion
  • When applicable, present the results of the research
  • If publication is a realistic goal, work with your preceptor to do so

Rotation length: 4 months (also one month of Research Prep during the first year)

Transplant Infectious Diseases

Rotation goals and objectives:

  • Understand the differences in the types of infections that solid transplant donors obtain depending upon the period of time posttransplant, the type of transplant, the type and degree of immunosuppressive
  • Be able to make well‐reasoned decisions on diagnostic testing to seek routinely in the pretransplant, peri‐transplant, and post‐transplant settings
  • Develop the foundation for a diagnostic and therapeutic approach in transplant patients who may present with clinical signs and symptoms that may be due to an infectious cause, to host vs. graft syndrome, a malignancy, and/or other potential diagnoses

Rotation length: 1 month