Infectious Disease

Fellowship

Graduates of our fellowship have gone on to careers in academia, clinical care, and work with industry at highly respected pediatric centers in the country.

How to Apply

We use ERAS (Electronic Residency Application Service, http://www.aamc.org/students/eras/) for Pediatric Infectious Disease Fellowship applications. Two interview dates are usually offered in December and January per application year.

Interested applicants could contact the Program Coordinator, Julia Zhou at jz78@columbia.edu or the Program Director, Dr. Natalie Neu at nn45@columbia.edu for further information regarding the fellowship program.

Please Note: We can not consider applications from HB-1 and J-1 Visa holders

Clinical Training

The fellows are trained at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York and the Columbia University Medical Center, located in Upper Manhattan. The Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York is a free standing children's hospital that is part of a large medical center, which has over 700 inpatient beds. The children's hospital itself has 203 pediatric inpatient beds, including 41 PICU and 66 NICU beds.

The Pediatric Infectious Diseases service has an active consultative service responsible for a wide range of individual ID and epidemiologic issues associated with a very busy tertiary care children's hospital. The team routinely is involved in the diagnosis and management of infections in children with complex underlying illnesses, such as stem cell and solid organ transplantation, complex congenital heart disease, and prematurity, as well as community-acquired infections in otherwise healthy children. The inpatient service team includes student and resident rotators participating in month-long electives. Frequent consultations for antibiotic management are requested as the hospital has an antibiotic control program which mandates approval for restricted antimicrobial agents. The service follows infections following organ transplantation, catheter-related sepsis, shunt infections, neonatal sepsis, sepsis in immunocompromised children, endocarditis, tuberculosis, osteomyelitis, pneumonia, AIDS, post-operative wound infections and congenital or neonatal viral infections. Drs. Foca and Neu have the major responsibility for consultations in Pediatric Infectious Diseases in affiliated hospitals including Nyack Hospital and St. Barnabas Hospital.

Clinical service time is divided into 4 to 6 week blocks. Fellows complete approximately 12 months of clinical service throughout the 3 years of the program. During the three years, it is expected that the fellow will gain progressive skills in the following areas: clinical skills, medical knowledge, practice-based learning and improvement, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism and systems-based practice. The following are examples of the skills that fellows are expected to acquire by year of training.

• Year 1: During the 1st year, fellows should recognize presentations of various infectious diseases and modalities for diagnosis and treatment. Fellows should generate a differential diagnosis that is reflected in consultation notes and perform literature reviews as needed. Close supervision is provided by attending physicians for formal consults and all "curbside" phone calls and to assist with literature reviews as needed. Treatment plans will be described by the fellow to pediatric residents and families with attending input.
• Year 2: During the 2nd year, fellows should solidify the above skills and become progressively comfortable designing treatment plans, soliciting other subspecialty input, and coordinating follow-up plans for patients. Fellows should be aware of new developments in the field. Literature reviews are conducted independently. Continued supervision is provided by attending physicians. Treatment plans will be described by the fellow to pediatric residents and families with minimal attending input.
• Year 3: During the 3rd year, fellows are expected to carry out their clinical duties with minimal supervision and when appropriate, to apply new developments in the field. Treatment plans will be developed including implementation of subspecialty input and be described by the fellow to pediatric residents and families independent of attending input.

Off-service fellows continue to participate in clinical activities. Outpatients are seen 1/2 day per week in the general infectious disease, HIV, STD, or TB clinics. Fellows are responsible for medical follow up of these outpatients, which includes coordination of care with other sub-specialties. These clinical practices are supervised by the Pediatric Infectious Diseases faculty.

Other clinical and training opportunities that are available during the 3 year program include the following: Clinical Microbiology, Hospital Epidemiology and Infection Control, Clinical Trials, Quality Assurance and Improvement, and the STD training course offered by the NYS DOH. Additional opportunities include attendance at a Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America/CDC Training Course (Healthcare Epidemiology course, www.shea-online.org), immunology and vaccinology training courses, and the possibility to obtain a MS or MPH in Public Health. We are in the process of developing our international HIV experience. We currently have clinical and research collaborations in Ethiopia, Vietnam and South Africa.

Fellowship Program Conferences

Fellowship training is augmented by core conferences that consist of didactic conferences and case conferences.

Didactic conferences : The fellowship program participates in the Department of Pediatrics didactic conferences, which occur on a weekly basis. Topics include: statistics, ethics, finances, legal issues, quality and safety, and clinical research. In addition, there are weekly combined Adult and Pediatric Infectious Diseases conferences which include sessions on a wide variety of infectious disease topics and research. These occur twice a week.

Case conferences : Fellows are given the opportunity to present interesting cases at this conference.

Journal Club: Fellows discuss import articles in the literature, usually associated with a case presentation or as an isolated event. This usually occurs once per month at our Pediatric Infectious Diseases Rounds.

Research Seminars: These occur throughout the year and among various divisions in the University. Once a year, the attendings and fellows present their active research projects.

Infectious Disease Intercity Rounds: Intercity Rounds are held at hospitals throughout the NY metropolitan area. Columbia fellows present at these rounds when our institution is the host. Click here to view an Intercity Rounds schedule.

Pediatric HIV Case Conference: These conferences occur once a week with the division's HIV clinical providers to discuss active cases in the HIV clinic. Antiretroviral management, resistance testing, and HIV primary care are discussed.

Weekly Pediatric ID Rounds: This is a weekly clinical conference to discuss interesting or challenging cases on the inpatient service. Emphasis is placed on understanding the differential diagnosis, diagnostic modalities, and treatment and prevention strategies.

Other conferences are available throughout the medical center and the university and are open to attendance. These conferences at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (CIRAR), and the Fogarty and Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiologic Research.

Past and Present Fellows

Name	Dates of Fellowship	Residency	Research Project in Fellowship	Current Location / Academic Title
Sujatha Rajan	1996-2000	New York Medical College	Pseudomonas and Pathogenisis of pseudomonas aeruginosa in Cystic Fibrosis	LIJ/ Assistant Professor
Marc D. Foca	1998-2001	Columbia University Medical Center	Catheter associated blood stream infections	CUMC / Assistant Professor
Kwabena Krow Ampofo	2000-2003	Children's Hospital of New Jersey at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center	Durability of immunity to varicella vaccine in adults	University of Utah / Assistant Professor
Philip L. Graham III	2001-2004	Columbia University Medical Center	Hospital acquired infections in the NICU	CUMC / Assistant Professor
Kristina Feja	2002-2005	MetroHealth Medical Center Case Western Reserve University	MDR - TB and LTBI; Candidemia	St. Peter's Hospital NJ / Assistant Professor
Valerie Waters	2002-2005	The Hospital for Sick Children University of Toronto	Pathogenesis of Pseudomonas	The Hospital for Sick Children University of Toronto / Assistant Professor
Ouzama N. Nicholson	2001-2006	Massachusetts General Hospital for Children	Maternal - child transmission of HIV	Merck Pharmaceuticals
David E. Michalik	2004-2007	Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital	Pathogenesis of varicella	Miller Children's Hospital / Assistant Professor
Sameer Jayant Patel	2005-2008	Cornell University	Antimicrobial Stewardship Program	CUMC / Assistant Professor
Catherine Yen	2006-2009	Columbia University Medical Center	Rotavirus vaccine in immunocompromised patients	CDC / EIS Officer
Paul J. Planet	2008-2011	Columbia University Medical Center	Microbial ecology of cystic fibrosis/evolution of Staphylococcus aureus	CUMC / ID Fellow
Sruti Nadimpalli	2011	Kaiser Permanente	TBD	CUMC / ID Fellow
Saul Hymes	2009-2012	The Mount Sinai Hospital	Biofilms in Gardnerella vaginalis	CUMC/ Fellow
Christina Gagliardo	2010-2013	Cornell University	TBD	CUMC/ Fellow