Inpatient rotations occur at two locations, Boston Medical Center and the West Roxbury VA campus. Fellows also have a continuity clinic at both institutions. In addition, various electives such as nuclear imaging, adult congenital cardiology, and advanced heart failure are available through a collaboration with various institutions around Boston.
Our rotations per fellowship year can be found here.
Boston Medical Center
BMC is a 514-bed hospital located in the South End neighborhood of Boston and is the primary teaching affiliate of Boston University School of Medicine. It was formed as a merger between Boston City Hospital and Boston University Medical Center. BMC is the largest safety net hospital and busiest trauma and emergency services center in New England. BMC is committed to providing quality and accessible healthcare to all who present to the medical center. 57% of our patients are from underserved populations and 32% of our patients do not speak English as their primary language. BMC is committed to training and education and is home to 821 residents and fellows.
West Roxbury VA Hospital
Fellows also spend a considerable amount of time on the inpatient services at the West Roxbury VA. Fellows rotate on a variety of rotations that include the inpatient general cardiology team, echocardiography, cardiac catherization, and electrophysiology. The West Roxbury VA is the cardiac referral center for all of New England. The VA is staffed by BMC, Massachusetts General, and Brigham and Women’s cardiology fellows. As a result, there is much interaction and collaboration between the three programs due to the time spent at the VA.
Teaching
There is a strong commitment to fellow education here at Boston Medical Center. Incoming fellows participate in a summer school program that consists of a series of lectures during the first 2 months that go over basic principles of general cardiology and concepts to help fellows navigate call during their first year.
A large part of cardiology is learning and understanding the art of echocardiography. To help fellows in their journey of echocardiography, we at BMC have developed an echo curriculum that fellows participate in throughout their training. These sessions focus on a wide range of echo topics and cover basic and advanced concepts. The time is split between a didactic and simulation sessions.
There are weekly didactic sessions that fellows participate in 6 months of the year. These lectures occur on Tuesday mornings and are given by the faculty on a myriad of cardiovascular topics. During their time in didactics, fellows are excused from all clinical duties so that they may focus on the teaching.