Clinical Training

The breadth and depth of clinical training is unparalleled. Fellows have a focus on the inpatient clinical care of patients with hematologic and oncologic diseases during year 1. They rotate at least twice throughout the sections of Oncology (Hematologic Malignancies, Solid Tumor, Neuro-Oncology and Blood and Marrow Transplant) and Hematology (Hematology Inpatient and Hematology Consult). Additionally, our fellows take inpatient call on hematology or oncology and serve as the point person for front-line providers on our units, staff in the Emergency Department or ICU, patients/families calling with questions, outside providers and our transport team.

Starting in year 1, fellows have both a hematology and oncology outpatient clinic where they follow a panel of patients and serve as the primary provider. There is a robust mentorship program to serve as backup and help educate our fellows in the outpatient care of their patients. Each fellow has a primary hematology faculty member who oversees the care of their outpatients. Additionally, fellows have a mentor in Hematologic Malignancy, Solid Tumor and Neuro-Oncology who help to educate them about their oncology outpatient panel. Their outpatient clinics serve as a formative educational experience as they learn to function as the physician for these patients and over the training program become autonomous in this care. During years 2 to 3, our fellows move to every other week clinics in both hematology and oncology in order to focus more of their time on research pursuits while continuing to be the primary provider for their outpatient panels.

Block Schedule for Hematology/Oncology Fellowship First Year Block Diagram

Fellows in years 2 and 3 don’t have any primary inpatient responsibilities.  They continue to have on-call duties and have several weeks of night-float where they can condense more calls into a week and then have other weeks free for research activities.

Other clinical training for our fellows includes a mandatory “pretending” experience where third-year fellows serve as the attending for a week on the service of their choice. They work directly with a faculty member who orients them to the unique roles they may not have seen during training, gives feedback on their team leadership, clinical skills and teaching of residents/first-year fellows and allows them to feel autonomous running the inpatient team. Fellows gain procedural experience through our General Anesthesia (GA) clinic during the first year and may perform moderate sedation on their clinic patients for procedures in certain situations. Fellows return to GA clinic during their last year in order to review procedural skills. All fellows join our Blood and Marrow Transplant team for 2 to 3 bone marrow harvests during their training. Our first-year fellows also have an outpatient rotation where they gain exposure to some of the unique clinics and areas including radiation oncology, neurofibromatosis, survivorship and cellular therapy. Fellows also have a lab-based rotation during year 1 in order to learn about the Blood Bank, Coagulation Lab, Flow Cytometry, HLA/Immunogenetics, Anatomic Pathology and Hematopathology.