Faculty availability is a high priority in the Deep Brain Stimulation Fellowship Program. Your rotations, clinic schedules and research time are designed to maximize interaction with faculty members. Although you will learn from and see patients with many specialists, you will develop your own style of patient evaluation and management.

Clinical training

The Deep Brain Stimulation Fellowship includes seeing patients in the clinic under the supervision of senior staff. There is emphasis on feedback and discussion from our movement disorders faculty to assist in diagnostic and treatment decisions.

Patients will be evaluated in the DBS Clinic. In this setting, the fellow will interact with faculty who have a special interest in DBS and with nurses trained in DBS management.

Referrals to the clinic come internally and externally. Some patients referred to the DBS Clinic have already been seen by neurology staff, who have determined that further input is needed regarding evaluation for potential DBS therapy.

The clinical training is not precisely specified at the beginning of the fellowship. Rather, you will have the opportunity to design a schedule that aligns with your training goals. The schedule will include adequate integrated time for research.

Didactic training

Clinical conferences, seminars, small discussion groups, journal clubs, didactic courses and one-on-one instruction are an integral part of Mayo Clinic's Deep Brain Stimulation Fellowship Program.

Course work

Formal didactic courses are available during the fellowship. Understanding statistical principles as applied to biomedical investigation is an important component. Mayo Clinic offers courses in epidemiology, biostatistics, and design and conduct of clinical trials.

Conferences

Throughout your fellowship you will participate, and periodically present, at weekly conferences, based on this schedule:

• Mondays - At weekly departmental teaching conferences (Grand Rounds), research presentations are given by Mayo Clinic faculty, visiting faculty or neurology residents. Clinical pathological conferences are held several times a year.
• Tuesdays - The Neuromodulation Committee meeting emphasizes multidisciplinary participation from Neurology, Neurosurgery, Neuropsychology, Psychiatry, Radiology, and other specialties. Potential patient candidates for DBS are discussed, and treatment options are considered. Didactic presentation regarding neuromodulation is a regular component.
• Wednesdays - Clinical case conferences are held at Mayo Clinic Hospital, Saint Marys Campus, and alternate between the adult inpatient neurology, child and adolescent neurology, neurosurgery and neuro-ophthalmology divisions.
• Fridays - Subspecialty conferences focus on the pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management of neurological disorders. These conferences are presented on a rotating basis by all subspecialty divisions in the Neurology department.

In addition to the regularly scheduled departmental conferences, you will attend resident conferences on Tuesdays. Residents and fellows also participate in an evidence-based medicine journal club.

Visiting professors have small-group discussions with neurology residents and fellows. Topics include child and adult neurology vignettes and neuroethics.

Research training

Research is a valuable component of this fellowship. A variety of research options are available, and you are encouraged to choose topics based on your interests and career goals.

If you are interested in bench research, you may choose to work with Kendall Lee, M.D., Ph.D., in his basic research laboratory or with Bryan Klassen, M.D., in neurophysiology. Clinical projects are available through any of the faculty.

Your research training will include design and laboratory techniques, data analysis and basic epidemiological principles.

Off-site rotations (optional)

As part of the Movement Disorders Fellowship, you may choose a rotation at the Mayo Clinic campus in Arizona or Florida. Mayo Clinic funds the authorized additional costs of travel, housing, auto rental and licensure fees, as well as travel expenses and lodging for you and your family. Our past fellows consistently rate these rotations as highly valuable.

Evaluation

To ensure that you acquire adequate knowledge and develop your technical skills, your performance is monitored carefully during the course of your program training.

At the completion of each rotation, fellows are evaluated by the faculty to whom they were assigned. This is accomplished through Mayo Clinic's Residency Management System, MedHub. MedHub is linked to the six core competencies identified by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (Patient Care, Medical Knowledge, Interpersonal Skills and Communication, Professionalism, Practice-Based Learning and Improvement, and Systems-Based Practice).

Completed faculty evaluations are reviewed by the program director, who assigns a pass/fail grade based on the scores and comments by the faculty member. Upon approval of the evaluation by the program director, the evaluation immediately becomes available electronically to the fellow in the MedHub system.