Infectious Disease Fellowship Overview
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Between one and three fellowship positions are available each year. Both clinical (two-year minimum) and academic (three-year minimum) tracks are available. All fellows spend a minimum of 12 months in clinical training, consisting of:
- Inpatient consultation,
- Ambulatory infectious disease clinical, and
- Clinical microbiology activities.
Clinical track fellows are also encouraged to do additional rotations in:
- Pediatric infectious disease,
- Hospital Epidemiology/infection control, and
- Antimicrobial management.
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Clinical Educational Opportunities
The North Carolina Baptist Hospitals, Inc., with approximately 800 general ward and 100 intensive care beds, is the teaching facility for the medical center. The infectious disease consulting service follows approximately 20 patients on a daily basis with two-to-five new consultations per day. The consultation experience is broad, with a mix of community-acquired infections and hospital-acquired infections. Many of our consults are patients are immuno-compromised hosts from the renal, heart and bone marrow transplant programs; the cancer center and the burn and trauma units. In addition, the hospital has a comprehensive HIV medicine program headed by a member of the Section on Infectious Diseases.
The inpatient activities are complemented by an ambulatory Infectious Diseases Specialty Clinic that meets four days per week. This clinic sees more than 2000 patients with HIV and general infectious diseases per year. A team of attending physicians, fellows, residents, a nurse practitioner, and medical students staff the clinic. There is also an International Travel Clinic that deals with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness and infectious diseases in international travelers.
Electives
Electives are available in pediatric infectious diseases, medical microbiology, hospital epidemiology and antimicrobial management, sexually transmitted diseases/public health.
Conferences and Didactic Educational Opportunities
Fellows are responsible for preparing topic discussions at a weekly infectious disease conference that includes participant faculty from the Section on Infectious Diseases, Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Clinical Microbiology and the Department of Pharmacy. Fellows are also responsible for formal teaching exercises for internal medicine residents and medical students while on the inpatient consultation service.
In addition to the multidisciplinary ID conference, there are monthly meetings for an active journal club, an HIV conference, and a hospital epidemiology conference. A monthly didactic conference for fellows allows the faculty to discuss topics in infectious diseases with the fellows to assist them in preparation for board certification.
Support is also available to attend the meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, the Society of Hospital Epidemiologists of America course in infection control or the semi-annual course in tuberculosis at National Jewish Hospital. Additional support is available for Fellows who attend meetings to make scientific presentations.
Research Training Opportunities
Our program has a major commitment to produce academic or clinical specialists in Infectious Diseases. For those committed to basic research, training will be through multidisciplinary research projects that transcend departmental lines and lead to expertise in molecular approaches to Infectious Diseases. We encourage you to explore these programs.
For those interested in further training in epidemiology, health care management or disease prevention we encourage you to explore these programs in the web section dealing with a Masters in Clinical Epidemiology.