Cooper University Hospital’s inpatient service is divided into the hematology/medical oncology inpatient team and the consult team. The inpatient team is composed of an attending, fellow, resident and medical students. On this service, you will be exposed to inpatient management of hematologic malignancy patients as well as inpatient chemotherapy administration to select solid tumor patients. The consult service is divided into a teaching and non-teaching service. The teaching consult service is comprised of one attending, a fellow, and resident(s). In order to ensure the appropriate balance of education for fellows, the non-teaching consult service is staffed by an attending and a physician associate who handle the overflow of the consult service when patient census is high.
In the outpatient setting, fellows rotate through a host of specialty clinics including benign and malignant hematology, gastroenterology, genitourinary, breast, thoracic, sarcoma, melanoma, central nervous system, and head and neck oncology. Fellows are assigned to the specialty clinics of various faculty members for six months at a time and have the opportunity to be exposed to all clinics by end of training.
The curriculum also allows fellows to enhance their skills in procedures such as bone marrow aspiration and biopsy, peripheral smear interpretation, intrathecal chemotherapy administration via lumbar puncture and ommaya access.
MD Anderson at Cooper utilizes a fully integrated Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system, which can be accessed from any computer. All inpatient, outpatient, chemotherapy orders, and imaging are managed via the EMR system.
Schedule
The PGY-4 training year emphasizes the management of both inpatients and outpatients. The first-year fellow’s time alternates between the inpatient service and consult teams. There are also blocks of electives and a half-day of designated outpatient clinic per week.
The PGY-5 training year curriculum includes more outpatient clinic, elective, and research time as well as a few months of inpatient coverage. There is also one required month of bone marrow transplant at a designated institution.
The PGY- 6 training year emphasizes outpatient clinic time, research, and board review.
Fellows will be expected to take at-home call throughout the fellowship whereby the fellow covers inpatient and outpatient issues and emergency situations.