Cardiology Los Angeles Medical Center - Curriculum

Goals & Objectives

The goal of the fellowship program is to provide a clinically and academically rigorous educational environment for fellows to obtain the skillset required to become outstanding clinicians.  The program is designed following recommendations outlined in the Guidelines for Training in Adult Cardiovascular Medicine Core Cardiology Training Symposium (COCATS 4).

Clinical Experiences & Rotations

The three-year program consists of 39 rotations (4 weeks each).  Fellows spend eight months in the coronary care unit (CCU), which provides training in the management of critically ill patients with a broad spectrum of acute and complex cardiac diseases.   Non-invasive cardiology training includes six to eight months of training in echocardiography (including transthoracic, transesophageal, and stress echocardiography), and four to seven months of training in nuclear cardiology, exercise testing, Holter monitoring, cardiac CT, and cardiac MRI.  Fellows spend four to six months in the cardiac catheterization laboratory, where they develop their procedural skills as primary operators, working closely with a supervising faculty.  They spend two to four months on the electrophysiology service, where they learn about intracardiac recordings, cardiac device management, and provide electrophysiology consultation. They spend one month on the congenital heart disease service.  Fellows care for cardiac transplant and advanced heart failure patients in the CCU.  In addition, they rotate through the advanced heart failure and transplantation service at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.  Outpatient cardiac continuity clinic occurs one afternoon a week throughout the training period.  The clinical curriculum is reinforced with daily educational didactic noon conferences that cover a wide spectrum of cardiology topics.  Clinical research is an integral part of the fellowship program, and all fellows participate in mentored research projects throughout their clinical years.

Conferences

• Fellows Core Curriculum: This conference is held daily at noon over lunch.  Invited faculty from general cardiology, interventional cardiology, electrophysiology as well as other departments present didactic lectures on topics related to the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases.
• Cath lab conference: This conference is led by the interventional cardiologists and is held every Friday.  The most interesting cases of the week are presented.  Angiographic findings, interventional procedures, and outcomes are reviewed.
• ECG conference: This conference is part of the core curriculum and is organized by the Electrophysiology faculty.  This is a case-based teaching conference where ECGs and intracardiac electrograms are reviewed.
• CCU conference: This is a weekly case-based conference where clinical fellows present cases from the CCU and lead a focused discussion of topics centered around clinical cases.
• Journal Club: These meetings are held monthly.  Recent journal articles are discussed by faculty and fellows.
• Electrophysiology conference: The electrophysiology staff meet daily to review cases of the day.  This is a working conference with a focus on patient management.
• Heart team conference: Fellows participate in daily heart team multidisciplinary conferences with interventional cardiology and cardiac surgery.  Cases are discussed with regards to different approaches and combined decisions are made.