Fellows are trained at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital, located in Upper Manhattan. The medical center has seven hundred inpatient beds and includes an active 300-bed medical service; a highly respected surgical service with a full range of subspecialties; and dermatological, obstetrical/gynecological, and psychiatric services. All the services consult the Division of Infectious Diseases on a regular basis, providing fellows with a broad range of clinical exposures. A busy transplantation service provides fellows with experience with both solid-, organ-, and hematologic-transplant recipients, and the Neurological and Eye Institutes provide further specialized training opportunities. Five adult intensive-care units provide fellows with a variety of exposures to infectious disease issues in the critical-care setting. Interactions with the residents, attending physicians, and medical students throughout the medical center enrich the fellows' experience. In addition to the superb inpatient facilities at the medical center, a large outpatient clinical service accommodates more than 850,000 outpatient visits per year.
Research opportunities, both basic and clinical, are plentiful. The division maintains close ties with the Mailman School of Public Health, providing fellows with the opportunity to pursue training in the public health aspects of infectious diseases. Noteworthy among the many facilities at the medical center are the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library, one of the largest medical collections in the world, and the Irving Center for Clinical Research, where active clinical research is conducted in a setting dedicated to patient care.
The first year of 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 will engage in the following activities:
Two months of the first year on the HIV/TB inpatient service, 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.
One month of combined experience in the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory and on the Solid Organ Transplantation Service
Clinical rotation at the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Clinic of the New York City Department of Health
Health care epidemiology experience will be gained either by attending the SHEA/CDC Training Course, completing formal coursework, or by rotating on the hospital epidemiology service. For more information about the SHEA course, please visit the Web site, http://www.shea-online.org/about/shea_courses.cfm.
During the months not on the inpatient consultation service, the fellows may consider spending time on the pediatric ID service.
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. In the second year of training, there is also a specific educational requirement in hospital epidemiology. An optional third year of training is available for fellows engaged in funded, productive research projects.
