The 12-month Brain Injury Rehabilitation Medicine Fellowship is designed to prepare you for a full-time academic career in brain injury rehabilitation medicine. Graduates of this program will be able to function independently as program directors, teachers, or investigators in university medical schools or medical centers.

Fellowship objectives

The goals during this fellowship are that trainees will:

• Manage rehabilitation conditions, including:
  • Traumatic brain injury
  • Stroke
  • Infectious or autoimmune encephalitis
  • Hypoxic brain injury
  • Brain neoplasm
• Identify and manage common rehabilitation medical conditions and complications, such as:
  • Nutrition and dysphagia
  • Neurogenic bowel and bladder
  • Skin protection
  • Pulmonary hygiene
  • Motor and sensory impairments
  • Cognitive disorders
  • Visual-spatial disorders
  • Sleep hygiene
  • Agitation
  • Psychiatric complications
  • Spasticity/contractures
  • Hydrocephalus
  • Seizures
  • Pain
  • DVT prophylaxis
• Identify strategies to promote health and wellness and prevent complications such as those mentioned above in various medical conditions
• Learn principles of interventions related to therapeutic management of various disabilities in order to improve function and quality of life
• Evaluate, prescribe and follow up on assistive devices and technology such as orthotics, seating systems, adaptive equipment, gait aids, and communication aids in order to improve independent function
• Request appropriate medical and surgical consultations from other medical and surgical specialists
• Advocate for care needs within the systems of care including educational, vocational, transitional, and home
• Outline the clinical course of and functional prognosis for commonly seen conditions
• Develop skills and lead the rehabilitation team in order to enhance the efficiency and efficacy of patient care
• Plan, facilitate, and coordinate transitions within and dismissal from the hospital along the continuum of care
• Develop skills to manage spasticity, including intrathecal baclofen management and botulinum toxin injections

Rotation schedule

A typical rotation schedule includes:

Night call

You may be required to take night call from home. During call, you have a staff rehabilitation medicine specialist available for consultation as needed.

Moonlighting

Moonlighting should not interfere with the required learning and must not violate the duty hour rules of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). Moonlighting should not compromise your education, but rather enhance it.

Research training

The goal of this training is to support your area of academic interest. The time dedicated to research during the fellowship is utilized to prepare you to become independent investigators upon completion of your training. At Mayo Clinic, many opportunities are available to pursue basic science, translational, clinical, or educational research. Each fellow's personal interests are matched with the research interests of a dedicated mentor.

You are encouraged to take research courses within Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. These courses aid in the development of a scholarly approach to patient care.

Didactic training

Mayo Clinic's Brain Injury Rehabilitation Medicine Fellowship allows you dedicated time to participate in didactic training, including:

• Physical medicine and rehabilitation (PMR) lecture series, grand rounds, seminar day, and journal club
• Dedicated brain injury medicine lecture series and journal club
• Lectures and grand rounds in medicine, neurology, and others

You present current research projects at the annual PMR research seminar. In addition, you may attend one national subspecialty-related meeting for education purposes and any other national meeting for which they have an abstract accepted for presentation.

Teaching opportunities

Opportunities are available for teaching rotating residents, medical students, therapists, and therapy students.

Evaluation

To ensure that you acquire adequate knowledge and develop appropriate technical skills, your performance is monitored carefully during the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Medicine Fellowship. You are evaluated on a monthly basis by all consultants with whom you rotate and meet with the program director to review these evaluations. A final year-end review is also completed. Additionally, you evaluate the faculty to ensure that your educational needs are being met.

Alumni

The most important indicator of the success of a training program is found in the outcomes of the graduates upon completion of their training. Our Brain Injury Rehabilitation Medicine Fellowship graduates have a 100% job placement rate.

Here's a look at what our recent graduates have gone on to accomplish: