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Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship Clinical Training

St. Jude and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center are nationally recognized for their care of immunocompromised children and adolescents. Our trainees benefit from this unique clinical experience, not only by providing consultative services to these patients, but by gaining understanding in how immunodeficiency impacts other aspects of clinical care, such as infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship.

Fellows participate in a minimum of 54 weeks of clinical rotations over three years. The clinical schedule is flexible. Typically, fellows spend approximately three months each on the consulting service at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and four weeks on the HIV service at St. Jude in their first year, then approximately two months at each hospital over the subsequent two years. A two-week refresher on the HIV service is scheduled in the third year to bring fellows up to date on therapy and prevention. In their second year, fellows spend four weeks with the Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant service. Programs are individualized, and may include additional rotations at either hospital and/or electives in Antimicrobial Stewardship, Infection Prevention, Global Health, and others.

Le Bonheur Children's Hospital is a 255-bed TJC-accredited and Magnet-designated freestanding children's hospital that has been recognized as a U.S. News and World Report "Best Children’s Hospital." There are approximately 14,000 hospital patients, 95,000 outpatient visits and 80,000 Emergency Department visits annually. Fellows also see neonates and infants in consultation at the adjacent Regional One Health Medical Center NICU. Le Bonheur is the primary pediatric teaching site for the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center and home to the only Level 1 pediatric trauma center in the Mid-South and the region's only Level IV NICU. Fellows on the clinical service at Le Bonheur see inpatients, and provide consultations and longitudinal care to children at weekly Infectious Diseases outpatient clinics.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is a 78-bed TJC-accredited and Magnet-designated freestanding hospital. It primarily serves children with cancer, non-malignant hematological disorders, and HIV infection and hosts the annual St. Jude-Pediatric Infectious Diseases Research Conference and the Pediatric Transplant ID Symposium. 7,800 patients under care are followed annually, mostly as outpatients. The HIV Clinical Program at St. Jude has been recognized as a Center of Excellence by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and is an International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT), Adolescent Trials Network (ATN), and Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS) study site. At St. Jude, fellows rotate with Oncology, Transplant, and HIV services.

Fellows take home call at night during their clinical rotations only, and have one day off per week (averaged monthly). At each site, the fellow supervises pediatric and medicine/pediatric residents, pharmacy residents, and medical students. Didactic teaching includes a weekly clinical conference, journal club, board review, and others.

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