Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship Program

Didactic Activities

Conferences

A series of daily conferences are geared to clinical fellow education. Some lectures also include didactic content and training for interventional cardiology and electrophysiology fellows. Clinical staff members, adjunct faculty, staff cardiologists and interdisciplinary specialists from other areas of medicine and surgery are invited and encouraged to attend our conferences, provide lectures, add expertise to discussions and enhance their own educational experience. Conference time is protected from interruption for clinical services barring patient emergencies.

Electrophysiology Conference

A weekly EP conference is held on Mondays at 7am. The scope of this conference includes a core curriculum series on basic and clinical electrophysiology, case presentations by cardiology and EP fellows, morbidity and mortality reviews, and EP Journal Club.

ECG Conference

ECG conference is held every other Monday at 5pm. This conference is usually proctored by the key EP faculty attending physician, or another faculty physician, with commensurate experience in detailed EKG review. It's geared toward providing familiarity with the format and coding of surface ECGs as required by ABIM Cardiovascular Boards.

Fundamentals of ECG interpretation and arrhythmia evaluation are covered over the course of the academic year and arranged around key subjects. In addition, fellows present interesting and challenging surface ECGs or intracardiac recording for group discussion.

Multimodality Imaging Conference

Multimodality imaging conference is held every other Monday at 12pm.

Weill Cornell Grand Rounds & Clinical Case Conference

In collaboration with Weill Cornell, in our weekly educational schedule we offer access to Weill Cornell’s Grand Rounds and Clinical Case Conferences. These bring together clinicians, researchers, and trainees to explore timely topics at the forefront of medicine. This session will feature expert-led discussion highlighting recent advances, clinical implications, and future directions in patient care, with an emphasis on evidence-based practice and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Cardiac Catheterization Conference

The cardiac catheterization conference is held every Wednesday at 7am. A clinical cardiology fellow rotating through the cardiac catheterization laboratory is responsible for the preparation of two out of four weekly conferences. The conferences cover important topics in pathophysiology of heart disease, basic and advanced principles of hemodynamic monitoring, various aspects of pharmacotherapy in interventional cardiology and many more essential topics about which any cardiologist should be familiar. Once a month a session dedicated to reviewing interesting angiograms and interventional cases which is proctored by one of the interventional cardiologists on the faculty with emphasis on training fellows to systematically and meaningfully interpret films. In addition, an interventional cardiology fellow prepares a monthly joint interventional cardiology-cardiothoracic surgery conference during which the most challenging coronary or valvular disease cases are shared with our cardiothoracic surgeons.

Echocardiography Lecture

A weekly echo conference is held on Wednesdays at 5pm. The scope of this conference includes a core curriculum series at the beginning of the academic year, followed by weekly case presentations by our cardiology fellows.

The core curriculum comprises lectures by the non-invasive faculty, covering all the major topics addressed by echocardiography.

Upon completion of the core curriculum, weekly conferences include case presentations by the fellows who are on echo rotations. Presentation includes a short clinical vignette, followed by review of echocardiographic images and hemodynamic assessments. In cases where multimodality imaging is utilized, additional studies (e.g. cardiac CT /MRI) are reviewed.

Once every two months, a short quiz is administered to help gauge progress and identify areas for improvement. Each quiz includes questions pertaining to hemodynamics in the echo lab, echo physics, and specific topic/s as outlined in advance, to help guide the studying for the quiz.

Board Review

Board review is held every Thursday at 12pm and is a comprehensive review of all aspects of a particular cardiovascular disease subject and is designed specifically to prepare fellows for the ABIM Cardiovascular Boards. The topics include, but are not limited to adult congenital heart diseases, acute coronary syndromes, valvular heart diseases, congestive heart failure due to ischemic and infiltrative cardiomyopathies, multitude of topics in preventive cardiology, and in-depth review of noninvasive and interventional imaging and treatment. Formats may also include examples of board style questions on the particular subject. On occasion, interdisciplinary experts (i.e. pulmonology, infectious disease, cardiothoracic and vascular surgery, endocrinology, gerontology, genetics, etc.) are invited to host lectures on specific subjects. A catered lunch is typically provided.

Fellows Boot Camp

By popular demand of junior fellows, coordination of select time is provided to orient or bolster skills in particular areas. Prior subjects include on-call management skills, hands on training in bedside echocardiography and knobology, Cath and nuclear films interpretation, transvenous pacemaker and Swan-Ganz insertion clinics, EP device interrogation clinics, and board reviews prep. These informal conferences are organized and championed by senior fellows with occasional input from select faculty.

Case Presentation Series

Each year the cardiology fellows are tasked with presenting one interesting clinical case to the entire department that highlights challenges in clinical diagnosis and treatment of complex cardiovascular disease. The fellows receive close supervision from faculty in building the presentation and teaching points allowing them to not only grow and share their fund of knowledge but also continue to build the skills of public speaking/presenting and improving as educators.

Quality Initiative and Morbidity & Mortality Conference

On a quarterly basis, the entire Division of Cardiology meets to review select in-Hospital M&M cases involving patients directly cared for by Division staff. Senior faculty members and section heads chair the conferences, and impartial external oversight Hospital committees for review recommend cases. Root cause analysis evaluations are performed, as well as development of measures to improve patient safety, staff skills and education, and overall quality care.