Department of Medicine

Division of Infectious Disease and Immunology

ID Fellowship Programs - Clinical and Research Tracts

The University of Massachusetts Medical School clinical infectious disease fellowship program began in 1976 when the hospital opened. In 1984, an NIH training program in Infectious Diseases began with a focus on viral pathogenesis. Since 1987, twenty fellows have entered the fellowship program in these two tracks. Fifteen former University of Massachusetts Infectious Disease fellows now have medical school appointments, and 6 have peer-reviewed research grant support. Other former fellows are now in clinical practice throughout the United States.

There are two tracts for Infectious Disease fellowship training, a clinical tract and a research tract.   The clinical tract is a two year fellowship while the research tract is a three year fellowship.  The research tract focuses in the final two years on either basic science research project or a clinical research project. 

The first year fellows, regardless of tracts, will be on a consult or inpatient service for 10 months (see description below), and participate in the Clinical Microbiology laboratory and on the Infection Control team. The fellow will have 3 weeks of vacation time. 

The consult or inpatient service time in the first year will be split between three services:   University consult, Memorial consult and University Inpatient/Transplant service.  The first two consult services will be traditional consult services, seeing patients where requested at either the Memorial campus hospital or the University campus hospital.  The University inpatient/transplant service will consist of 1) working with an Infectious Disease attending to care for patients admitted to the ID inpatient service.  These patients usually include AIDS or HIV patients and patients with a general ID diagnosis (pneumonia, endocarditis, osteomyelitis, etc.).  For these patients, the ID team has primary care responsibility.  Most of these patients will have internal medicine house staff or nurse practitioners to assist with care. 2) In addition, the fellow will see consults from the solid organ transplant or bone marrow transplant services with an ID attending.  The intention of the University Inpatient/Transplant service is to give fellows training in inpatient primary ID care and in the ever growing area of transplant Infectious Disease.

In the second year, a clinical fellow, would be on the above services for 4 months, have one month of Infection Control (if not done during the first year) and one month of Pediatric ID.  The fellow will be expected to develop a clinical research project with guidance from an ID attending and work with them on the project for a 6 month period of time.  The project may be a clinical research project in Infection control, on an ID transplant related problem, on an HIV related problem or whatever interests the fellow may have or encounter in their first year of ID fellowship and wish to further investigate.  The expectation is that the fellow will prepare a scholarly manuscript for publication that is based upon the clinical research project.

In the second year, a research fellow will devote their time to their research project either, basic science in the laboratory or clinical research.  The mentor and the research project will have been identified by March of their first year of fellowship. 

During the entire 2 year fellowship the fellows will be involved in a longitudinal clinic a half day a week where they will follow their own HIV patients, other general ID patients, patients whom they discharged on antibiotics and need a f/u appointment, or travel patients.  Second year fellows will gain experience in public health by attending Tuberculosis (TB) clinic one half day every other month (approximately 6 times/2 year fellowship).  In addition, they will also intermittently attend the Travel Clinic.

Call will be split up by all fellows (1st, 2nd, and 3rd year) who are not on vacation or on the Memorial consult service.   Since there will be six to seven fellows each year this should average about 1 weekend every 5 and one weekday night every 5th week night call day.  The weekend call starts Friday at 4pm and goes until Monday morning and the week night call is one night M, T, W, or Th.  The fellow on the Memorial consult service will take weekend call one weekend of the month at Memorial but will participate in the week night call with all the other fellows.

Three weeks may be taken each year for vacation. Two or three weeks can be from elective time (Micro, Infection Control) and up to one week from the Transplant Infectious Disease rotation.

Conferences

Fellows must attend a Basic Science lecture once/month.   This may be done by attending the Immunology/Virology seminar series that is held on Wednesdays, 1:30 - 2:30 PM, the Molecular Genetics and Microbiology (MGM) seminar series on Fridays, 12:15-1:15pm, or the Immunology seminar series on Thursdays, 3-4pm.

Our hospital-based, full-time, Infectious Diseases faculty are actively involved in basic and clinical research investigation in numerous areas of infectious disease, sit on NIH study sections, participate in Data Safety Monitoring for national multi-center research trials. Dr. Sarah Cheeseman is a member of the Subspecialty Board in Infectious Diseases for the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Questions about the ID fellowship program can be addressed to the program director, Dr. William Marshall, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA 01655. If you have any questions regarding the program, please feel free to call Dr. William Marshall at (508)-856-7513, or email: william.marshall@umassmed.edu.  For more information about Worcester and the surrounding area, visit the Student Affairs website.

Applications

We only use ERAS (the Electronic Fellowship Application Service) for applications. We no longer accept paper applications.

The deadline for next Fellowship Year is April 1. Early applications are strongly encouraged.  Interviews are usually conducted from February through April. If you have any questions about the application process, please email  scalleyk@ummhc.org .

Kathy Scalley
Infectious Diseases and Immunology Fellowship Coordinator
UMass Memorial Health Care - University Campus
55 Lake Avenue North
Worcester, MA 01655
508) 856-2456