Fellowship Program

The goal of the pediatric cardiology training program is to train physicians to be able to attain the knowledge, skills and attitudes to become an excellent academic pediatric cardiologist. These physicians should commit to self-directed and life-long learning, and demonstrated competence to enter a practice in pediatric cardiology.
 
The fellowship training program in pediatric cardiology is broad in scope, covering the spectrum of congenital and acquired heart disease in all age categories. The program emphasizes a balance between learning, teaching and research, and the need to have all the understanding and clinical skills to care for the clinical cardiac problems one might encounter in all age groups and clinical situations. The curriculum also includes the understanding of adults with medically treated or surgically treated congenital heart disease, as well as fetal and preventive cardiology.

The training period commitment is three (3) years; 24 months are primarily for clinical training, 12 months are spent in research.

 
Inpatient service
Our program emphasizes care management of pediatric patients with all variety of heart disease. All in-house newborn and pediatric consultations are included in the responsibilities of the rotation. It requires the fellow to work closely with the house staff by providing supervision and education of the pediatric colleagues. A full-time faculty member of the cardiology section will assume ultimate responsibility of patient care and the one-on-one aspect of the trainee's educational process during the daily rounds.

Echocardiography
The fellow performs and reviews pediatric echocardiographic studies with faculty on a regular basis. The fellows will learn the essentials of cardiac ultrasound and discussing diagnostic criteria as well as limitations in certain studies.  Besides standard transthoracic techniques, during the 2nd year of training the fellow gains skills in transesophageal echocardiography, most of which are performed intraoperatively, in the cardiac catheterization laboratory or as outpatient in procedure center. The fellow also learns fetal echocardiography during this rotation at the fetal echo clinics on every Wednesday. 

Cardiac Cath
The program provides opportunities under close supervision for the trainee to gain skills in the performance of cardiac catheterization and interventional techniques. Cardiac catheterizations are performed 4 days per week. The trainee on this rotation will have the opportunity to formally present the clinical data during the weekly Combined Pediatric Cardiology-Surgical Conference.

Cardiac ICU
The fellow manages critically ill preoperative and postoperative patients in conjunction with the cardiac intensivists and surgeons who are in the unit 24/7. The fellow also will get exposure to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).

Electrophysiology
The fellow will encounter a wide spectrum of cardiac conduction abnormalities. The faculty works closely with the fellow in managing the patient’s rhythm disturbances. Patients that require procedural interventions are scheduled, and the fellow participates in the temporary pacemaker insertion, elective cardioversion, EP studies and/or RF ablation. 

Cardiac pathology
The cardiac pathology rotation is at the Congenital Heart and Conduction System Center where the cardiac morphology and anatomy of congenital heart disease is available for hands-on study.

Research rotation 
Fellows have a total of 12 months dedicated research time during their 3 years of training. Fellows are required to be involved in a research project under the guidance of a faculty research mentor. Projects may be in clinical research or basic science research. Fellows have 2 months research time in the first year and 5 months each in the second and third years. The results of these projects are often presented at regional or national meetings.

Continuity clinics
The fellow is assigned to establish one half-day weekly continuity clinic throughout 3 years of training. The fellow will join a faculty member to assess patients in the outpatient setting. Accurate history and careful physical examination along with the laboratory testing is analyzed. 

Call schedule
The fellows are on-call from home every fifth night throughout the training, except for the first 4 months of training and when they are on-call in cardiac ICU.

Conference and learning activities