Infectious Disease Fellowship Program at MedStar Georgetown

The MedStar Health - Georgetown University Hospital Fellowship Program in Infectious Diseases

Why train here

Broad and In Depth Training with State of the Art Resources

MedStar Health is the largest healthcare provider in the Maryland and Washington, D.C., region, encompassing 10 hospitals and the MedStar Health Research Institute. Our fellows receive intensive training on the inpatient consult service, which takes place at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital with over 600 inpatient beds and 1300 physicians.

As the tertiary care facility for all of MedStar, Georgetown University Hospital provides care for a diverse and complicated range of patients. Ranked as one of the region’s best hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, Georgetown Hospital services span all fields, with centers of excellence in Transplant, Oncology, Gastroenterology, Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Orthopedics.

In December 2023, the much anticipated Verstandig Pavilion opened, with state of the art facilities, including new intensive care units, operating rooms, and emergency department.

 A look at the Verstandig Pavillion 

Fellows also train in the Georgetown Hospital Infectious Diseases outpatient clinic for ambulatory experience. Our clinic provides care for over 900 persons living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus. In addition, to their HIV continuity clinic, fellows also rotate through dedicated clinics in hepatitis B and C, solid organ transplant infections, tropical medicine and general outpatient ID. Expertise in HIV-STI care, management of home infusion services, and treatment adherence counseling are skills particularly emphasized.

Unique Opportunities

For the 2024 academic year, we are proud to be offering the option of a concentrated track in Transplant Infectious Diseases, coordinated and supervised by Dr. Rebecca Kumar. Participants’ schedules will be tailored to more dedicated clinical time in both inpatient and outpatient Transplant ID, with mentoring and guidance through a capstone research project.

Our fellows are also eligible to join the Georgetown Department of Medicine’s well-established Global Health Equity Track. Participants are trained in global health, ethics, law, policy, and tropical diseases through a longitudinal curriculum, elective rotations, and domestic and international electives. For fellows interested in Global Health and Public Policy, research collaboration with faculty at Georgetown’s premiere Global Health Institute is a unique opportunity.

Fellows are instrumental teachers for the Georgetown School of Medicine students and Internal Medicine residents, during clinical rotations and through the resident didactics series. In addition, our fellows are full voting members on the MedStar Georgetown Hospital Infection Prevention Committee and Antibiotic Utilization Committee, gaining valuable experience in infection prevention practices and policies, outbreak investigation, antibiotic stewardship, and selection of antimicrobials for the hospital formulary.

Our division enjoys a close working partnership with the National Institute of Health’s Infectious Diseases clinical team. Georgetown ID fellows spend a month at the NIH on the consultation service, two weeks at the NIH microbiology course, and participate in a weekly, interactive, virtual, inter-city conference. The NIH ID fellows also rotate in turn, for several months at Georgetown on our inpatient service.

Competitive Benefits

The MedStar Georgetown GME program offers competitive stipends and a wide range of benefits, including health benefits, retirement plan and employee assistance program. Please visit the MedStar Health GME website to view our House Staff Manual, Sample Contract, and the FY25 stipends and benefits offered by MedStar Health.

Please note: Georgetown University Hospital constantly seeks to improve employee benefits, all benefits are subject to change.

For additional information you may also contact the Benefits Office at (703) 558-1300.

Outstanding Location

Finally, being situated in our nation’s capital, our fellows are able to enjoy all that Washington D.C. has to offer– our National Mall and historic monuments, a vast network of parks and trails, the incomparable Smithsonian museums, world-class dining, theater and concerts, and much much more.

We hope this gives you an overview of what makes our program an outstanding and special place to train. But the most important part of any program is the people. Please take a look at this video from some of our faculty, to hear more about the program in our own voices!

MedStar Georgetown Infectious Disease Fellowship Program video

Curriculum

Inpatient Consult Service

The Inpatient Consult Service is a thriving service, split into four separate teams:

• Transplant/Immunocompromised Service
• ICU and General Infectious Diseases Service
• Musculoskeletal Service 1 & 2

There is one attending with 1-2 fellows on both the Transplant/Immunocompromised service and the ICU/General service, often also with rotating residents and students. Each inpatient service census typically averages 12-20 patients, with a maximum cap of 15 follow-up patients and 5 new consults per fellow. All patients followed in the Infectious Diseases clinic that require inpatient care are admitted and covered through the Hospital Medicine service.

Fellows will rotate with one attending on the Musculoskeletal service for 4-8 weeks per year. This service provides care for patients undergoing limb salvage and other infectious diseases associated with plastic surgery and orthopedic surgery. Fellows also may choose to rotate through the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases inpatient consult service and gain valuable experience with infectious complications in complex bone marrow transplant recipients on clinical trials.

Through these inpatient rotations, fellows will gain expertise in diagnosing and treating infections in the following areas:

• Critical Care
• General Medicine
• HIV
• Surgery (Solid organ transplant, Neurosurgery, General, Otolaryngology, Orthopedics, Plastics, Urology)
• Bone marrow transplant
• Hematology/Oncology
• Obstetrics & Gynecology

Outpatient Clinic

Our fellows have several months dedicated solely to outpatient Infectious Diseases care. During these blocks, fellows become expert in the treatment of the following areas:

• General infectious diseases
• Solid organ transplant (pre-transplant evaluation, post transplant infections)
• Travel medicine
• Tropical medicine
• STI/PrEP/PEP
• Viral hepatitis
• Employee Health/Occupational Exposures

Additionally, each fellows holds a weekly half-day continuity clinic, with an emphasis on HIV management, through all 24 months of fellowship training (unless away on an international rotation).

The outpatient experience is supported by a comprehensive support staff that includes a dedicated nursing staff, social worker, treatment adherence specialist and specialty pharmacy liaisons.

Didactics

   
*Greater Washington Infectious Diseases Society

Clinical learning is complemented by structured didactics as detailed above. The core curriculum series is held 3x per month and mostly given by internal faculty, with occasional guest and fellow talks. Our weekly inter-city virtual conference with the NIH is a program highlight. Infection Prevention is a hospital wide meeting convened quarterly. Monthly meetings are held for Journal Club, State of the Art (in depth ID talks), Antibiotic Utilization Committee and the Greater Washington ID Society (GWIDS) presentations. GWIDS is a city-wide conference for all ID programs and the fellows’ capstone case presentation; Georgetown fellows typically present in April.

In addition to structured didactics, fellows, of course, pursue independent learning on their own, spurred by the cases they see. To support this, we provide access to the following resources: 

• Dahlgren Memorial Library (The Graduate Health & Life Sciences Research Library at Georgetown University Medical Center
  • Offers expert medical librarian support
  • Can be accessed from home. Electronic resources consist of over 6302 journals, 142 databases including PubMed, 18 point of care tools, 20 medical apps, 4,806 online books
• Access to PubMed
• Access to UpToDate
• IDSA membership which includes access to the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Infectious Diseases