Curriculum

The first year of the fellowship is dedicated to clinical infectious disease training. For eight months of the first year, fellows share primary responsibility for the division's inpatient consultation service. In a setting supervised by an attending physician, fellows gain direct practical experience and see an impressive breadth of infectious diseases. Consultation rounds are made daily and each fellow sees an average of 300 new patients each year.

In addition to the consult service, fellows engage in the following activities:

• Four weeks of elective, an opportunity to work under the guidance of mentor(s) on long-range projects and planning for post-clinical year(s) of fellowship.
• Four weeks on the Transplant ID Service to become familiar with and gain experience with diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of infections that occur in patients with organ transplants including heart, lung, kidney, liver, bone marrow – stem cell.
• Two weeks of dedicated Clinical Microbiology Laboratory  and Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology
  • The goal of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory experience is to become familiar with microorganisms associated with general Infectious Diseases seen in the Consultation Service, the Transplant Service, the Sexually Transmitted Disease rotation, the inpatient HIV Service, and in the Clinic - including their nomenclature, virulence factors and diagnostic methods by which they can be detected, isolated and identified
  • Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology activities are structured to allow fellows to become knowledgeable about principles of healthcare-associated infection transmission and prevention, device-associated infections, multi-drug-resistant-organisms (MDROs), outbreak investigations, and exposure investigations.

In the outpatient setting, fellows attend a clinic session that is designed to complement the inpatient experience. A regularly scheduled half-day clinic session provides fellows with the opportunity to follow patients seen on the consultation service in an ambulatory setting once they have been discharged from the hospital. This ongoing continuity clinic also permits fellows to develop skills in the longitudinal management of HIV infection under the direct supervision of an attending physician. Fellows continue their outpatient clinic experience in the second and third years of fellowship.

The second year of training is dedicated to a research project of the fellow's choosing. Experiences in basic, translational, clinical, and epidemiological research are readily available. Many of our fellows do coursework at the School of Public Health towards a formal degree in epidemiology, biostatistics, or public health (i.e. MPH, MS). Fellows engage in the following clinical activities:

• Weekly continuity care clinic
• Clinical rotation at the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Clinic of the New York City Department of Health
• Clinical rotation on the Transplant ID Service or the inpatient HIV/TB Service
  • The Inpatient HIV/TB Service is a unit dedicated to the management of the complications of HIV infection and the diagnosis and management of tuberculosis. Fellows will be part of a team composed of medical house staff and two attending physicians and will have the opportunity to participate in teaching during daily rounds. The objectives are to gain experience in the management of inpatient HIV, to increase knowledge of HIV and the associated opportunistic infections, and to become more familiar with antiretroviral treatment – including selection of appropriate initial regimens, and the indications for modification – in an inpatient setting. The fellows will also learn about and participate in the coordination of continuous care between the inpatient and outpatient arenas.

Starting in the second year, fellows interested in clinical careers can focus their training on specific areas of clinical infectious diseases by pursuing one of the following clinical tracks in the second (and possibly third) year of training:

• Transplant Infectious Diseases Track
• HIV and Viral Hepatitis Track
• Antimicrobial Stewardship and Hospital Epidemiology Track
• General ID/Clinician Educator Track

Every fellow, regardless of which track they are on, will have a Scholarly Oversight Committee, which consists of mentors, co-mentors, and key faculty to oversee every fellow’s career development. Drs. Angela Gomez-Simonds and Mike Yin are chair and co-chair of the Scholarly Oversight Committee and they oversee the fellows’ scholarly progress.

An optional third year of training is available for fellows engaged in funded, productive research projects.