During the 12-month Infectious Diseases Transplant Fellowship at Mayo Clinic, you experience clinical training in the inpatient and outpatient setting and have protected time to conduct research.

Clinical training

Your training provides exposure to a variety of patients with infectious diseases resulting from solid organ and bone marrow (stem cell) transplants.

Rotation schedule

Rotation descriptions

Clinical transplant infectious diseases

The transplantation infectious diseases clinical consultation service is an integral part of the transplant teams in solid organ and marrow (stem cell) transplantation. Two clinical services serve the transplant population: one dedicated to recipients of heart, lung, kidney, pancreas, liver and composite tissue allograft transplantation, and a second service dedicated to the care of allogeneic and autologous stem-cell transplant recipients, and those with hematologic and solid malignancies.

During the clinical rotations, you are supervised one-on-one by an experienced clinician with expertise in clinical transplantation infectious diseases. You are given autonomy, with guidance and supervision, in the evaluation and management of complex infection problems in the hospital and outpatient settings.

Research elective

You spend five to six months conducting clinical or laboratory research in cooperation with clinical and laboratory investigators in infectious diseases. Basic science projects are also available in cooperation with biochemistry, experimental pathology, immunology, molecular biology, molecular genetics and pharmacology.

The focus of basic research in transplantation infectious diseases centers on regulation of virus-host interactions, including immunology of transplant infections, such as herpes viruses and HIV.

Clinical research projects are most commonly performed by recent graduates. Examples include cytomegalovirus (CMV) viral load in blood, use of CMV viral load in respiratory fluid to diagnose pneumonia, immune assays to predict CMV disease, epidemiology of transplant infections, fungal infections in lung transplant recipients, mucor infections, histoplasmosis in transplantation, parvovirus B19 infections, solid organ transplantation in HIV infected patients and left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) infections.

Didactic training

Clinical conferences, seminars, small discussion groups, journal clubs and on-on-one instruction are all an integral part of the Infectious Diseases Transplantation Fellowship. A variety of conferences are available, including:

• Transplant Grand Rounds
• Transplantation core curriculum
• Journal clubs
• Infectious diseases core and clinical conferences
• Visiting faculty dinners

You are expected to present one transplantation Grand Rounds discussion on your research or another infectious diseases topic.

Evaluation

To ensure that you acquire adequate knowledge and develop the appropriate technical skills to meet program expectations, your performance is monitored carefully during the Infectious Diseases Transplant Fellowship. You are formally evaluated by supervising faculty members on a regular basis and meet with the program director to review these evaluations. In addition, you regularly evaluate the faculty to confirm that your educational needs are being met.