Pediatric Cardiology Fellowship Training Program

The Children's Heart Center at MCG has trained fellows in Pediatric Cardiology for over three decades. The goals of our GME accredited fellowship program are to train fellows to be the best, most complete general pediatric cardiologists with special expertise in congenital heart disease, cardiac development, noninvasive and invasive hemodynamics, clinical physiology, and patient and family-centered medicine.

The Pediatric Cardiology Fellowship is one of graduated responsibilities. There are three rotations in each of the years which are relatively similar, i.e., inpatient rotation, outpatient rotation, and invasive procedures rotation. During the latter part of the first year or early part of the second year a pathology elective is taken, typically with Dr. Bharati in Chicago. This varies between three and four weeks in duration. Research is conducted in one of three major areas: the Georgia Prevention Institute (clinical preventive cardiology including physiology, echocardiography and cardiovascular reactivity) human cardiac development (fetal cardiology program),or vascular biology (Vascular Biology Group, including molecular biology and vascular physiology). During each of the three years the fellow has increasing responsibility for the management of patients but always with attending supervision and back up. The focus of the training program is to develop each of the six core competencies: Patient care skills, medical knowledge, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, practice-based learning, and systema based practice. During the three years fellows are closely mentored in our program, with a heavy emphasis on their personal and professional growth.

This program's level of responsibilities are so that during the last six months of fellowship, the fellows can independently manage the inpatient-ICU service, perform routine and complex cardiac catheterization, including balloon atrial septostomy, semilunar balloon valvuloplasty, dilation of recurrent coarctation, and the placement of intracardiac or intravascular occlusion devices, perform and interpret echocardiograms of complex cardiovascular defects. They should be familiar with advanced noninvasive imaging techniques (transesophageal echocardiography, MRI, and fetal echocardiography), and versed in the general aspects of antenatal diagnosis and expectant management of congenital heart disease and diagnosis and treatment of fetal cardiac rhythm disturbances. They should be competent to perform transesophageal electrophysiologic studies and be able to interpret diagnostic intracardiac studies, and to be able to to provide emergency arrhythmia management (transvenous temporary pacing and cardioversion).

Fellows should anticipate a fourth year of training if they desire expertise in interventional cardiac catheterization, electrophysiology (including RF) or advanced noninvasive imaging techniques (in order to direct an echo lab).

Fellowship Application: FREIDA: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/education-careers/graduate-medical-education/freida-online.shtml

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