Curriculum of the Infectious Disease Fellowship

Our curriculum offers variability and flexibility to best fit your needs and interests. You will have autonomy when creating your schedule while maintaining ACGME requirements.

Didactic Experiences

These didactic experiences are required for fellows:

Clinical Infectious Disease Case Conference

Our weekly, accredited ID case conference is the most important—and highly rated—educational exercise for fellows outside of bedside teaching.

As a fellow, you will organize these conferences, and will present an in-depth literature review of approximately 10 topics throughout fellowship. We also encourage you to meet with experienced mentors who have presented worldwide to fine-tune your academic presentation skills.

Attendees can claim CME, ABIM MOC, and/or ABP MOC credit from this conference.

Didactic Curriculum

Graduates say our ID curriculum sessions are one of the top fellowship experiences. This multidisciplinary conference includes presentations from biostatistics experts, pediatric ID faculty, guest lecturers and foundational sessions based on ID didactic requirements.

We review and plan session content according to fellow feedback, expert review, and developing needs of the field.

Rotating Conference (Journal Club, Research Conference)

Throughout the year, we offer rotating conferences in place of the clinical infectious disease case conference.

• Journal Club. Fellows present once per year. You'll work one-on-one with an expert mentor to develop skills in fundamental strategies for hypothesis generation, study design, analytical methodology and discussing practical conclusions with the ID community.
• Research Conference. Present QI and/or research project progress in this yearly conference. Share your work, gain direct and in-person feedback from world-renowned researchers and prepare for presentation at national conferences.

Development Sessions

For these monthly lunch sessions, fellows collectively identify topics related to their interests, career goals, and the business of medicine.

We then invite experts and guest speakers to make small-group, in-depth presentations on the chosen topics. Favorite sessions have included a graduate panel on job searching, managing the outpatient clinic and in baskets, and managing a research program as a PI.

Board Reviews

Our fellows lead Wednesday morning board-review sessions that the education fellow organizes. We provide each fellow with an infectious disease board review text and host guest speakers, who the fellows also choose.

We also offer many conferences led by our division faculty and academic partners. We encourage you to participate in as many of them that suit your professional interests.

Clinical Experiences

Through all of your inpatient and outpatient rotations, you'll be part of multidisciplinary patient care teams that include pharmacists, advanced practice providers, and learners.

Required Rotations and Scholarship

• Year 1: Two-week micro laboratory rotation with the UW Health Microbiology lab
• Year 2: Two-week UW Health HIV intensive clinical rotation

General Infectious Disease, UW Health

This rotation has the widest breadth of patient population and infectious disease diagnoses. Our service sees all inpatient consults, except for transplant/immunocompromised host, hematology-oncology, and surgical infections.

You'll gain exposure to regularly encountered inpatient infections and special situations, including HIV/AIDS, impaired hosts, illnesses of travelers, nosocomial infections, sexually transmitted infections, and the epidemiology of infectious diseases.

Transplant Infectious Disease, UW Health

This rotation focuses on the diagnosis and management of the immunocompromised inpatient adult. Because UW Health has one of the largest transplant programs in the nation, you'll gain expertise in transplant ID that few fellowship graduates in the country have.

You'll learn to manage immunocompromised patients through pre-transplant infectious disease assessment, therapy and immunosuppressive agents, inpatient follow-up, and inter-team communication.

Surgical Infectious Disease, UW Health

This rotation includes consults from surgical subspecialties, and provides an opportunity for telemedicine to an alternative UW Health site. It focuses on adult inpatients from a variety of socioeconomic levels and ethnic background.

General Infectious Disease, William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital

This rotation has an adult veteran patient population with a broad range of infectious disease diagnoses—at a center of excellence for lung, heart, and liver transplants.

You'll function as a consultant physician on a team that includes an APP and pharmacist. You'll gain exposure to regularly encountered inpatient infections and special situations, including HIV/AIDS, impaired hosts, illnesses of travelers, nosocomial infections, sexually transmitted infections, and the epidemiology of infectious diseases.

This service also offers the only experience of care coordination with the Community Living Center, a skilled nursing home that works in conjunction with the VA.

Infectious Disease Continuity Clinic, UW Health

By attending outpatient clinics at the UW Health ID Clinic, you'll gain exposure to general infectious disease, impaired hosts, illnesses of travelers, nosocomial infections, sexually transmitted infections, and epidemiology of infectious diseases.

We encourage you to seek out and follow interesting cases, especially to gain experience with the full continuum of patient treatment.

HIV/AIDS Outpatient Continuity Clinic Experience, William S. Middleton Veterans Hospital

During this experience, you'll manage new and established HIV patients and rotate in the PrEP HIV clinic. You'll have time to read key HIV literature and learn about the primary care care environment for HIV patients.

ID Continuity Clinic, William S. Middleton Veterans Hospital

In this clinic, you'll gain exposure to general infectious disease, HIV, impaired hosts, illnesses of travelers, nosocomial infections, sexually transmitted infections, epidemiology of infectious diseases, and travel medicine.

See grid below for a sample schedule. Fellows typically average one weekend every five weeks.

Specialized Electives

We automatically include three weeks of protected elective time in each fellow's schedule. You can use this time for research or to participate in program-supported, unique electives that align with your interests.

In previous years, fellows have shadowed with infection control practitioners, completed a two-day curriculum at the State Laboratory of Hygiene, and participated in a needle exchange program.

We also offer additional elective time on an individual basis. Fellows have used this time for such activities as global health rotations and outbreak investigations.

Scholarly Activity

Research

Fellows identify a research mentor during their first few months of the fellowship. This mentor works closely with you throughout training to assist with publications and your required conference presentation.

See our fellowship research page for more details on our robust opportunities and support.

Quality Improvement

The Department of Medicine’s QI Curriculum for Fellowship teaches fellows how to apply quality improvement knowledge and skills directly to clinical practice.

You're required to participate in the UW Health QI symposium at least once during your fellowship.

Teaching

The Department of Medicine's Fellow Medical Education (FAME) Training Track trains fellows to become effective clinician-teachers and scholars.

Leadership

Each year, we appoint a senior fellow as the education fellow—a role similar to a chief resident. Duties include assisting and guiding the onboarding process for incoming fellows, representing fellows in planning meetings for didactic sessions, and maintaining the board review series with program support.

Certifications

All first year fellows take the SHEA Primer on Healthcare Epidemiology, Infection Control & Antimicrobial Stewardship certification which is paid for by the program.

Several of our pathways include financial support for additional certification, such as suboxone prescribing or tropical medicine certification. We also consider additional training support on a case-by-case basis.