Training and Curriculum

The BMT/hematologic malignancy service manages the inpatient care of patients with hematologic malignancies, for all patients receiving engineered cellular therapy (such as CAR-T), and for patients undergoing autologous or allogeneic bone marrow transplant. The team consists of an attending physician, the fellow, two advanced practice nurses, three internal medicine house staff and rotating medical students. Clinical pharmacy and nursing clinical specialists attend rounds daily and actively participate in the care of patients. The fellow, with the attending, oversees the operation of the service, supervises the house staff and medical students, and coordinates with pharmacy and nursing services. The fellow is supervised by the attending physician who performs daily rounds and bedside teaching.

This rotation service will expose the fellow to the broad range of inpatient nonmalignant hematology. This includes disorders of hemoglobin, bone marrow failure, pancytopenia, anemia, immune deficiency, transfusion medicine, disorders of red cells and platelets, coagulation defects and neutrophil disorders. Patients diagnosed with a hematologic malignancy will be transferred to the inpatient hematology service for treatment and management. The fellow will work alongside a faculty member dedicated to the consult service, and may often have other learners, residents and medical students they will supervise and teach.

These clinical laboratory rotations are one month each where the fellow will learn to interpret laboratory tests of coagulation disorders of hemostasis or thrombosis, specific methodologies in hematology along with laboratory testing crucial to the practice of hematology, and gain direct experience in both the blood donor service and the transfusion medicine service aspect of this discipline.

The training program in clinical research is designed to give each trainee a substantive foundation in basic research, a two-year period of formal training beginning in their second year. At the end of the first year, the fellow submits a research proposal that targets either intensive training in laboratory research or the design and execution of clinical trials during the second and third years of subspecialty training. Research training occurs in a carefully supervised apprentice/tutorial system, in which a trainee works on a project of their own within the laboratory or clinical area of their chosen preceptor. This mentorship, combined with didactic components, including research seminars, are designed to expand each trainee’s knowledge of the field. Fellows will work with, aside from their mentors, biostatisticians and research study assistants.

Fellows are expected to participate in half-day continuity clinics (organized by Disease Research Groups, notably: Genitourinary, Gastroenterology, Lung Cancer, Breast Cancer, Benign Hematology and Heme Malignancies/BMT) once per week. Each fellow can be assigned up to two continuity clinics in six-month durations during each year of their fellowship. The fellow will follow their own patients, be the primary physician responsible for their care and will be assigned the supportive staff of the disease-specific clinic in which they are rotating (i.e., nurses and administrative staff who can help them manage the patients they are following). The fellow will sign out each patient to the supervising attending for that clinic.