Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences offers a one-year Heart Failure/Heart Transplant and Cardiothoracic Surgery Physician Assistant Fellowship at Mayo Clinic's campus in Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona. There are two tracks available — medical and surgical. The medical track focuses on heart failure medicine. The surgical track focuses on cardiothoracic surgery, unique in its emphasis on surgical advanced heart failure therapies. Each track accepts one physician assistant per year for postgraduate training.

Trainees start the fellowship year with their national certification and state licensure in place.

Program highlights

The medical track of the Heart Failure/Heart Transplant and Cardiothoracic Surgery Physician Assistant Fellowship allows for inpatient and outpatient expertise. As a physician assistant (PA) fellow in this postgraduate fellowship program, you will experience high-quality clinical training in heart failure, cardiac transplant, and ventricular assist device (VAD) cardiology.

You will learn from world-class faculty to gain experience in the four major components of heart failure evaluation, including:

• Etiology and contributing factors
• Hemodynamic status
• Appropriateness of therapy to relieve symptoms, prevent cardiac disease progression, and prevent unexpected mortality
• Thoughtful triage for surgical intervention or end-of-life care

The surgical track of the Heart Failure/Heart Transplant and Cardiothoracic Surgery Physician Assistant Fellowship allows for both surgical skills and patient care experience. As a physician assistant fellow in this program, you experience high-quality postgraduate surgical training from world-class faculty in the surgical triaging, intervention, and management of patients with cardiothoracic disorders.

• The fellow will have an in-depth understanding of general cardiac surgery with sub-specialty knowledge of heart failure surgical options including mechanical circulatory assist devices, transplantation, and extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation. You will also have exposure to endoscopic vein harvesting.
• As part of the training, you will experience the surgical management of other thoracic disorders including lung and esophageal diseases.
• The successful graduate will develop intensive care unit and step-down unit clinical management skills as well as independent first assistant operative skills.

Additionally, both fellows are exposed to ongoing clinical investigation in heart failure, cardiac transplant, and VAD medicine, and are expected to participate in new clinical projects with anticipated authorship.

Completion and certification

After successfully completing this fellowship, you will receive a certificate of completion from Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences.

Accreditation

See accreditation information for Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science.

Program goals and mission

The primary goal of the program is to provide specialized, postgraduate surgical training to motivated physician assistants who are interested in pursuing careers in cardiac diseases focused on advanced heart failure and cardiac transplant, with either a medical or surgical track.

Our mission is to:

• Expand the physician assistant fellowship opportunities in the United States that focus on advanced heart failure and heart transplant cardiology, and those that focus on the surgical interventions of these patients
• Develop a potential pool of physician assistants with advanced training who would be eligible for employment within our own system, if there is an opening, or at any transplant center within the United States
• Allow the highly medical trained physician assistant to be employed in the community with expertise in the management of advanced heart failure in a general cardiology setting
• Allow the surgical physician assistant to be employed in the community with expertise in the pre, post, and intra-operative management of cardiothoracic surgery