Pediatric Infectious Diseases

General Overview of the Program

The Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship at the Children's Hospital of Michigan is an ACGME approved program. The major goal of the program is to train infectious diseases fellows in a progressive manner to become highly competent subspecialists.

Children’s Hospital of Michigan (CHM) is a 228-bed tertiary care center located in the Midtown area of Detroit. CHM is consistently ranked among the nation's top pediatric hospitals. It is the pediatric facility within the Detroit Medical Center complex and serves as the center for pediatric training for the Wayne State University School of Medicine. The Children’s Hospital of Michigan serves a large and diverse urban and suburban population with a vast array of pathology. There are approximately 12,000 inpatient admissions each year.

The division of Infectious Diseases has five full time faculty members who have varied clinical and research interests. The division also has a dedicated clinical pharmacist infectious diseases specialist, infection prevention manager and infectious diseases specialty nurse. Care of patients by the division members is divided into two services: Inpatient 24-bed unit (dedicated for pediatric residents training) and ID consulting service. In addition there is an outpatient clinic for patients follow up care and referrals from the community pediatricians. Clinical training of fellows is centered on the consultation service and the outpatient clinic. The Detroit Medical Center has a large  diagnostic microbiology laboratory as well as  radiology department and PET scan facility. The division has strong relationship with the Internal Medicine Infectious Disease program and with the Division of Pediatric Immunology.

The fellowship is a three-year program with one year dedicated to clinical service and two years dedicated to clinical or basic research. Each year is divided into 13 4-week blocks. During their training, fellows gain expertise in the field of pediatric infectious diseases through participation in the management of a large number of patients with a vast array of pathology both in the inpatient and outpatient settings. Daily ID consultation rounds include an ID attending, ID fellow, rotating general pediatric residents and clinical ID pharmacist. Patient population includes immune-competent and immune-compromised hosts including cancer patients, solid organ transplant patients (kidney, heart and liver) as well as bone marrow or stem cell transplant patients. In addition the division provides consultations to all pediatric subspecialty services (critical care, neonatology, neurology, cardiology allergy/immunology, nephrology, gastroenterology and pulmonology) and surgical services (orthopedics, cardiovascular, neurosurgery, ENT, plastic surgery and general surgery).

Other educational experience that is integrated in the curriculum includes rotations in the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Clinic and the Primary Immunodeficiency Clinic. Fellows also spend one month during the second year of fellowship in the microbiology laboratory to gain knowledge of basic diagnostic microbiology and interpretation of laboratory tests through didactic lectures and laboratory bench experience directed by an expert faculty member. Fellows actively participate as members of the Infection Control Committee of the hospital where they participate in committee activities and learn the principles of epidemiology and infection control. Fellows also participate in the Antibiotic Stewardship Committee meetings. The main focus of this committee is to promote appropriate use of antimicrobial agents at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan to optimize patient care while limiting antimicrobial toxicity and resistance.

Fellows participate in the following educational activities year-long: Weekly combined Medicine/ Pediatric ID grand rounds, monthly division journal club, ID fellowship didactic lecture series Pediatric ID board review sessions and CHM lecture series,. In addition, there is a hospital wide weekly Fellowship Research and Education Seminar which concentrates on areas common to all fellowships such as statistics, grant writing, and medical ethics, and serves as a forum for presenting research projects for valuable feedback early in the project design.

Fellows are expected to conduct clinical or basic research to fulfill their training requirements. Research endeavors will depend on the particular interest of the fellow. Mentors are the division faculty members, Wayne State University faculty and Children’s Research Center of Michigan faculty members doing basic research.

Research laboratory facilities and animal facility on WSU medical campus and main campus are available if necessary. Instruction in basic epidemiologic and biostatistics methods, experimental design, data collection and analysis and laboratory techniques used in infectious diseases research are given on a regular basis. A biostatistician can guide the fellows and faculty in planning their research project and analysis of data.

Small research grants are available to fellows through application to the Ashok and Ingrid Sarnaik Fellows Research Grant to facilitate initiation of research projects and assist in travel expense if study results are accepted for conference presentation.