Education
The program is designed to train fellows for careers in academic medicine. Intensive training in laboratory research is a major emphasis, with focus on learning techniques of molecular biology, clinical and moleculer epidemiology, and clinical trails as applied to studies of human viral disease and the host response to viral infection. Fellow spend a total of 12 months on the clinical service during a three or four year training period, and participate in teaching activities when on service. The clinical service includes interaction with medical students, pediatric and surgical residents and attendings. Each fellow also is expected to plan and carry out a clinical investigation, such as a vaccine evaluation or an antiviral pharmacology study. Collaborative research and teaching activities exist with the Department of Microbiology/Immunology and Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, and Geographic Medicine. In order to obtain sufficient experience in laboratory research, fellows are encouraged to spend a fourth year in the lab. The clinical experience is broad, including infectious diseases of otherwise healthy children, as well as infections in children with chronic and/or immunosuppressive disorders. The breadth of clinical syndromes includes tropical medicine given our geographich area and active travel within our community. Clinical training is at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, and includes both inpatient and outpatient experiences with opportunities to develop a personal patient panel. Fellows also gain experience in infection control and diagnostic microbiology laboratory techniques.
All clinical teaching faculty (Drs. Arvin, Gans, Gutierrez, Lewis, Maldonado, and Prober) participate in the weekly clinical infectious diseases conference as well as the weekly combined Pediatric/Adult Infectious Diseases Grand Rounds. During their months on the pediatric infectious diseases clinical rotation, each attending participates directly with general pediatric and subspecialty resident education by providing lectures, participating in group discussions, making daily ward rounds, patient care activities, and consultations, and providing at least weekly laboratory supervision. Dr. Cornelia Dekker is a Faculty member in the Research Line of the Division of Infectious Diseases and interacts with subspecialty residents as a research mentor throughout the year.
