Educational Activities
An integral part in fellowship training is the development of the necessary skills to practice as an independent neonatologist by the end of the 3 years. Our program boasts two busy units with over 1700 admissions annually. Whether you learn by experience or you are an avid reader, the sheer volume of clinical exposure will advance your training exponentially. Our facilities tend to admit a high volume of underprivileged families. This translates to a high disease burden that presents an excellent opportunity to the trainee to gain experience through a wide range of common and rare pathologies.
Conferences take place in various delivery settings. Some are hands on like ECMO, NRP, and simulations. In some, the fellow leads the discussion like morbidity and mortality. The rest are usually didactic.
List of Conferences
- Neonatal Resuscitation Course: Certification must be completed during the first 2 months of training; certification as instructor in NICU Year 1 of training.
- Neonatal-Perinatal Conferences (Once monthly conference) in collaboration with Maternal-Fetal Medicine faculty members and depending upon the case with other UTHSC faculty members from various departments. Conferences take the form of didactic lecture, or case presentations and discussions or clinical-pathological conference.
- Mortality-Morbidity Conference (2/month): Open case discussion among fellows, faculty, and in certain cases with pathologist.
- Faculty meetings: Fellows attend faculty meetings as part of their training. This introduces them early in their careers to other areas of Neonatology other than just clinical care.
- Physiology conference: Once monthly. Topics are discussed by basic science faculty, Neonatology Faculty members or invited faculty members from other departments or divisions.
- Administrative meeting (one/month) This conference is attended by a multidisciplinary team of attending neonatologists, neonatology subspecialty residents, social workers, nutritionists, discharge planners, Nurse-practitioners, pharmacist, record librarian and others involved in clinical care in the NICU. Discussions include review of monthly statistics, resolution of current and on-going problems, QI projects, and future planning.
- National meetings: Attendance and presentations at scientific/research meetings (Pediatric Academic Societies/ Society for Pediatric Research and Southern Society for Pediatric Research) are encouraged. Fellows are also nominated to attend regional and national conferences to present their research work.
- Journal Club: This is held once a month as part of the Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine conference series. Fellows/Faculty present at this conference with emphasis on how to review articles, critic study design and review statistics.
- Congenital Anomaly conference: Once a week Congenital Anomaly Conference (CAC, Course Director Dr. Giancarlo Mari, MD). Conference is attended by multiple subspecialists with review of fetal anomalies and preplanning of management before delivery of the infants. These include fetal images and input from various consultants. Here, fellows start the preparation for coordination of care at the time of delivery.
- Radiology Conference: Twice a week (pediatric radiologist) review of x-rays, CT scans and Ultrasounds with fellows and faculty from NICU.
- Board Review: Once every two weeks where by the fellows go through recent topics from Neoreviews and their associated questions.
- Neonatology Grand Rounds: Once every week where by neonatology topics are reviewed. This is usually presented by neonatology faculty as well as by faculty from other subspecialties.
- Neonatology-Surgery Conference: Quarterly in collaboration with Pediatric Surgery. Fellows present common cases or topics and review current guidelines and recommendations for treatment.
- Genetics-Neonatology Conference: Quarterly in collaboration with Department of Genetics. Cases are presented and the differential diagnoses and work ups are reviewed.