Elective Rotations for Residents and Clinical Fellows: Infectious Diseases

Select 'Apply to REP' under Program-Specific Elements to apply to this rotation.

Elective Description

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) infectious disease training program welcomes internal medicine Residents to a four-week clinical rotation at the NIH. The internal medicine Resident will join the infectious disease consultation team in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center, Patients seen by the consultation service are referred from all departments of the hospital, and have a broad spectrum of underlying medical and surgical problems, including many rare conditions. Consultations on immunosuppressed patients, particularly those undergoing stem cell transplantation, form a substantial part of the experience.

The internal medicine Resident is expected to work with the team every weekday between 8:00 a.m. and approximately 5:00 p.m. The Resident makes rounds with the Fellow in the morning until 10:30 a.m., when the team meets with microbiology staff to discuss microbiology lab results of the day (microbiology rounds). The internal medicine Resident then works up new consults and sees old consults. Cases are discussed with the Fellow and presented to the attending physician in the afternoon. The internal medicine Resident then enters an electronic consultation note.

Required weekly conferences include a Monday conference (journal club alternating with core ID topic), a Thursday ID Consult Service Conference (informal discussion of management issues and tough cases), and a Friday case conference. Well-known experts from outside NIH supplement the conferences with didactic lectures and case discussions. Medical Grand Round and other teaching conferences are available but not required. Internal medicine Residents can use the enormous resources of the NIH computer system and one of the finest medical libraries in the United States to search for information about the patients they are seeing. There is no required evening or weekend duty.

Internal medicine Residents do not have an opportunity for laboratory work but can learn about the laboratory work by attending any of the many research conferences/seminars on the NIH Calendar of Events.

Elective Objectives

  • Extensive, unparalleled experience managing a diverse patient population with difficult infectious disease issues.
  • Learn about the research studies in which patients in Infectious Diseases are participating.
  • Learn how personal interaction with an excellent diagnostic microbiology laboratory can improve patient care.
  • Discuss their patients at the weekly ID Consult Service Conference.
  • Present one of their patients at one of the weekly case conferences.
  • Experience first-hand the possibility of pursuing infectious disease subspecialty training after internal medicine residency.

Selection of Applicants

One internal medicine Resident is scheduled for each four-week period during the academic year.

Staff

  • Christa Zerbe, MD, Director, Infectious Disease Fellowship Program
  • Veronique Nussenblatt, MD, Associate Director, Infectious Disease Fellowship Program/CEP Rotation Director/Chief of ID consult service
  • John Bennett, MD, Associate Director, Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program
  • Various other core Infectious Diseases faculty

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This page last updated on 11/07/2022

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