Congestive Heart Failure - Program Info

The Division of Cardiovascular Disease offers an unaccredited year of heart failure training to medical residents who have completed an internal medicine residency and are interested in developing a knowledge base, interactive skills, technical skills, and learning attitudes to provide high-level care to adult patients with the most complex forms of heart failure, in both the inpatient and outpatient settings.

Heart Failure fellows will spend approximately six months on the heart failure service acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary to diagnose and manage patients with a variety of congestive heart failure presentations and conditions leading to CHF including valvular heart disease, arrhythmias, coronary artery disease, pericardial disorders and connective tissue disorders

The fellow will be expected to evaluate and participate in the ongoing care of inpatients on the congestive heart failure service conducting daily in-patient rounds with the heart failure faculty attending with detailed evaluation of all new patients as well as comprehensive follow-up of established patients for continuity of care. At any given time, approximately 10 patients will be attended to by this service. The rounds include review of the patient's history, physical examination, and results of both non-invasive and invasive diagnostic studies. Raw data from these diagnostic studies are frequently reviewed. These include electrocardiograms, chest x-rays, hemodynamic data, angiograms, echocardiograms, stress echocardiograms, MUGA scans, exercise nuclear studies, Cardiac CT and MRI scans and exercise studies with measurement of maximal oxygen consumption.

The heart failure fellows will spend approximately six months conducting clinical research entering patients into investigator initiated studies, clinical trials, collecting data and obtaining informed consent assisting the Department in preparing manuscripts for publication.

The heart failure fellow will also spend two to three afternoons a week in the outpatient ambulatory setting. The fellow will learn the principles of outpatient management, and evaluation of patients for further therapies, including devices such as Biventricular pacemakers, Internal cardioverter defibrillators, left ventricular assist devices, and heart transplantation.