Clinical training

During your clinical training in the Pulmonary Medicine Fellowship, you are under the direct supervision of a Mayo Clinic physician consultant. This helps you make the most of your educational experiences while ensuring the best quality of patient care delivery.

You gain experience in:

• Clinical pulmonary medicine
  • Inpatient and outpatient pulmonary consultations
  • End-stage lung disease, including lung transplant and lung volume reduction surgery
  • Thoracic radiology and pathology
  • Pulmonary continuity clinic
• Critical care medicine
• Flexible fiber-optic bronchoscopy and endobronchial ultrasound
• Pulmonary function testing, physiology and cardiopulmonary exercise testing
• Sleep disorders
• Research

Rotation schedule

A typical two-year rotation schedule includes:

Didactic training

Didactic training is an integral part of fellowship. In addition, education is also delivered through innovative methods including simulation center experiences and the following workshops: Basic and Advanced Mechanical Ventilation, Biostatics, Advanced Airway, Advanced Ultrasound, and a dedicated Spirometry course.  

During your training, you will participate in:

• A weekly combined case conference featuring pulmonary, thoracic surgery, critical care, sleep, radiology and pathology cases
• A weekly conference presented by pulmonary medicine fellows, pulmonary and critical care medicine fellows or the staff consultants, often on materials published in peer-reviewed journals and/or presented at regional and national meetings, recent advances or new technologies, or research projects with clinical translational impact
• Core lectures in pulmonary and critical care medicine
• Monthly comprehensive conferences in sleep medicine
• Weekly research conferences to review and discuss recently conducted or ongoing research projects
• A biennial course in advanced pulmonary physiology and Spirometry
• Frequent journal clubs to discuss and critically evaluate recent scientific publications on basic mechanisms of lung disease and clinical aspects of pulmonary and critical care medicine
• Weekly interventional pulmonary case conferences and tumor board conferences
• Weekly sleep case conferences
• Quarterly multidisciplinary mycobacterial disease conference
• Daily lung tumor board conference
• Morbidity and mortality conferences
• Quality improvement projects

Research training

Your fellowship includes at least six months of research. If you are pursuing a clinical career, this training will give you a greater understanding of research and its importance to clinical medicine. If you are pursuing an academic career in research, additional research training time is available. This training will lay a solid foundation for your work as an independent researcher.

In either case, you are encouraged to present your research findings at national meetings and publish them in peer-reviewed journals.

Your research opportunities at Mayo Clinic are outstanding. They meet and even exceed the opportunities available in other academic university centers.

You may choose from studies in:

• Biochemistry
• Cell biology
• Clinical pulmonary medicine
• Immunology
• Microbiology
• Molecular biology
• Oncology
• Pulmonary physiology
• Sleep disorders
• Medical Education
• Ethics

In addition to the research training offered within the Pulmonary Medicine Fellowship, you can extend your fellowship to include one or more years of research training. A clinician-investigator track and a postdoctoral research training grant (T32) are also available for those interested in pursuing an academic career.

There is an opportunity to take courses through the Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCaTS) to obtain a postdoctoral diploma or master's degree in statistics. Fellows also have an opportunity to participate in the Health Care Delivery Scholars Program and the Biomedical Ethics Scholars Training program during their research training.

Call frequency

The call schedule is different for each rotation. Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science follows the recommendations of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

Teaching opportunities

Opportunities are available for teaching rotating residents and medical students. Also, fellows are given the opportunity to participate in educational workshops to become better teachers, which include a Teaching Skills Workshop, and Presentation Skills Workshop.

Evaluation

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

You are evaluated formally by your supervising faculty member after each clinical rotation and meet with the program director to review these evaluations. In addition, you regularly evaluate the faculty to ensure that your educational needs are being met.