Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program Overview

About Our Fellowship Program

The Infectious Diseases Fellowship Training Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Harvard Medical School is a fully ACGME-accredited program that offers comprehensive Infectious Diseases clinical training and education and many different research opportunities. Trainees joining our fellowship program will participate in the primary and consultative care for a diverse population of patients at BIDMC.

Leadership

Christopher Rowley, MD, MPH, Interim Division Chief
Wendy Stead, MD, Fellowship Program Director
Douglas S. Krakower, MD, Associate Program Director

The following represents a snapshot of BIDMC's characteristics important to infectious diseases fellowship training:

649 licensed beds, including 440 medical/surgical beds, 77 critical care, and 60 OB/GYN
Level 1 Trauma Center, roof-top heliport, ED services 54,000 patients/year
Cancer Center, Transplant Programs (Bone Marrow Transplant and Solid Organ Transplants), Spine Center
Care for more than 1500 HIV+ patients in the region
Close collaboration with Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston Children's Hospital
Ranks in the top 55 US NIH-funded institutions of 2019 Ranks
Center for Life Science (CLS), a state-of-the-art biomedical research facility which opened its doors in 2008 and is the largest research facility in the Longwood medical area
Expanding network of hospital and community practice affiliates including The Fenway Community Health Center, a national leader in advancing health care in the LGBT community

Clinical Activities

Activities within the Division of Infectious Diseases at BIDMC pertinent to fellowship training include:

Two active inpatient fellow-covered consultation services - each service includes two ID fellows and an attending ID faculty member. One consultative team is primarily focused on immunocompromised patients while the second consultative service provides general ID consults and is primarily responsible for patients in the intensive care units.
One advanced practitioner and attending-covered consultation service (ID3) which takes overflow non-ICU, non-immunocompromised consults to help unload volume from the fellow-covered consult services.

Infectious Diseases outpatient clinics:

Fellow continuity clinic - fellows with their faculty mentor provide longitudinal care for their HIV patients, see new ID consults in the outpatient setting, and follow patients for OPAT or other post-discharge care.
Travel Clinic - a vibrant clinic primarily staffed by a nurse practitioner that provides fellows with opportunities to learn travel medicine.
Outpatient Parenteral Antibiotic Therapy (OPAT) - a clinic with dedicated physician oversight, nursing and administrative staff that facilitate the follow-up of inpatients discharged on parenteral antibiotic regimens.
Ambulatory ID Clinic - fellows participate in the evaluation and care of patients in specialty ambulatory infectious diseases clinics such as Mycobacterial Disease, Transplant ID, HIV, Hepatitis and ID Urgent Care clinics.
Specialty Clinic Opportunities for Senior Fellows – opportunities during second year of fellowship for those interested in acquiring expertise in these content areas include – HIV clinic, Hepatitis Clinic, TB/Mycobacterial Clinics, Refugee Health Clinic, Transplant ID Clinic and Anal Dysplasia Clinic

Fellowship Funding

For the two years of ACGME-accredited ID fellowship training, full salary support is provided for both years by BIDMC.

Shared Harvard-Wide Activities

The BIDMC ID fellowship program collaboratively interacts with the other Harvard Medical School-affiliated ID fellowship programs at Boston Children's Hospital and at Brigham and Women's Hospital/Massachusetts General Hospital. Common efforts among the ID programs include a weekly conference that, in the early months, is focused on didactic educational offerings by senior faculty from the several programs and is followed thereafter by fellow-presented case conferences. The BIDMC ID program also shares a weekly immunocompromised focused conference with Children's Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Center. We also participate in Harvard Medical School-wide Centers for AIDS Research (CFAR) conferences.

BIDMC Infectious Diseases Conferences

The BIDMC Infectious Diseases program has a weekly conference schedule that includes: an interprofessional case conference (with a focus on teaching and involvement by faculty from ID, clinical microbiology, antibiotic pharmacy PharmDs and other case-specific disciplines), a journal club/research in progress conference, a dedicated fellow-focused educational conference, a multidisciplinary HIV conference with the primary care division, Immunocompromised Host conference, Antimicrobial Stewardship Conference, Orthopaedic-Infectious Diseases Interspecialty Conference and microbiology plate rounds.

Fellowship Program and Options

YEAR ONE: The first year of ID fellowship is focused primarily on the inpatient ID consult experience where fellows encounter diverse general ID-related problems on the medical and surgical services, as well as work with immunocompromised hosts (bone marrow and solid organ transplant), and patients on the OB-GYN service. In addition, fellows will rotate through the outpatient Ambulatory ID Clinic at BIDMC, Infection Control/Antimicrobial Stewardship, the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory and Boston Children's Hospital (for inpatient pediatric ID). Throughout the first two years of training, all fellows spend one-half day per week seeing patients with their assigned preceptor in their continuity clinic.

YEAR TWO: In year two, fellows continue to have required outpatient continuity clinics and have limited inpatient ID consultation coverage. Fellows have a variety of choices with two and three (or more) year training options. Two year scholar tracks provide focused training in specific areas such as transplant ID, hepatitis, microbiology, medical education, antimicrobial stewardship and infection control. For those interested in a more traditional research experience, there are options in clinical research, basic science and translational research, as well as advanced fellowships in Hospital Epidemiology and Antimicrobial Stewardship. Fellows choosing to pursue a career in clinical or translational research will be able to apply for different educational opportunities such as the program in Clinical Effectiveness summer course at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the Master's Program in Clinical and Translational Investigation through the Harvard Catalyst Program.

To make the transition to second year, fellows will work with a faculty advisor and the fellowship program directors. This advisor will be chosen based on each fellow's area of interest and will work with him/her to help identify the best track and mentorship team for his/her career development. Once identified, fellows will work with this designated mentor throughout the remainder of their training. For those in the two year tracks, this mentor will help devise a training plan that incorporates the clinical and scholarly activities. For those interested in the research tracks, this mentor will supervise their development into an independent investigator, which includes the development and implementation of research projects, publications, and grant submissions that will be used to obtain funding for project support and salary support in the non-ACGME years.