The Vanderbilt Pediatric Endocrinology Fellowship program is a three-year program preparing graduates to practice the clinical science of pediatric endocrinology and diabetes and to develop an area of expertise in clinical or basic research. The American Council of Graduate Medical Education has accredited the fellowship program since 1981.
The program provides an unparalleled training experience in clinical endocrinology. There are over 30,000 outpatient visits in the pediatric endocrinology and diabetes clinics each year. Over 4,000 children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes are followed in the Children's Diabetes Program, and over 300 children are referred each year with newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes. In addition to adequate exposure to common pediatric endocrine conditions, we also evaluate and care for hundreds of children with the rarest endocrine and genetic disorders.
Service Time
Fellows will function both in a supervisory and direct care role during their in-patient service time, with guidance provided by members of the division faculty.
During the training program, fellows will take a total of 24 weeks of inpatient service and home call. In a typical curriculum, fellows take 12 call weeks in the first year and six in each of the remaining two. We also note that training needs may vary, and we routinely adjust the curriculum to meet the specific needs of our fellows.
The breakdown of service time allows fellows to become increasingly independent over the course of their training, as well as allowing research mentors and projects to be explored during the first year of fellowship.
Call Schedule
During service weeks, fellows will take daytime and overnight call from Friday at 12:00pm through Monday until 5 p.m. On non-holiday weekdays, call nights are shared by faculty and other fellows in order to allow appropriate rest for the fellow and attending on service. Call nights include coverage from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. the following morning, Monday through Thursday. While not on service, fellows will have occasional call nights while otherwise on outpatient clinical rotations and during research time, with approximately 1-3 call nights per month throughout the Fellowship. Overnight call can be taken from home unless there is a clinical need for patients to be seen in person, which is uncommon. Fellows covering call nights are always supported by a back-up attending.
Outpatient Clinic
Throughout the three years of the Fellowship, each fellow is assigned a single half-day clinic per week to care for their own panel of endocrine patients under the supervision of the division faculty. All fellows are assigned a single half-day of continuity clinic each week to care for their own panel of endocrine patients under the supervision of division faculty. These clinics rotate between endocrine and diabetes patients.
First year fellows receive additional training in outpatient clinics for four additional half-days each week and work with multiple division faculty. In addition to endocrine and diabetes clinics, the training program also schedules fellows to rotate through subspecialty clinics including but not limited to obesity, lipids, differences in sexual development, bone metabolism, genetics, adolescent gynecology, cancer survivorship, and other special interest areas.
Scholarly Activity
Fellows will be expected to design and implement a research project over the course of their fellowship. Time is provided during the first year of fellowship to establish mentorship and explore potential research projects.
Possible research projects vary depending on the fellow's clinical and research interests, and may vary from clinical, translational, or laboratory-based basic science research. A Scholarship Oversight Committee (SOC) will be established with each fellow to provide additional guidance towards successful completion of each project, with the expectation that each project effort will result in manuscript(s) for presentation at national meetings and submission to an academic journal.
Additional opportunities of scholarly activity include participation in quality improvement, bioethics, or educational initiatives during fellowship with the expectation that the fellow develops and/or implements a product under the guidance of a faculty member.
Support and guidance in the pursuit of training grants (T32) is also supported and encouraged by the program faculty.