General Description and Mission

Hennepin County Medical Center and the Minneapolis Heart Institute based at Abbott-Northwestern Hospital are proud to offer an ACGME accredited Fellowship Training Program in Cardiovascular Disease in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Our mission is to provide outstanding clinical training in cardiology.  We aim to train cardiovascular disease specialists with superb clinical skills, a life-long commitment to learning, and the ability to function as leaders in their local medical communities.

Number of Fellows and Clinical Activities

There will be two fellows for each year (two first year fellows, two second year fellows and two third year fellows).  The program pairs one faculty member with each fellow every day during all clinical activities. The structure of each rotation differs somewhat depending on whether it is an inpatient rotation, imaging rotation, ambulatory experience or laboratory based-rotation. However, in all instances faculty members spend time with fellows every day, one-on-one, to ensure appropriate supervision.

• Inpatient rotations include cardiology consultation at HCMC and ANW as well as advanced heart failure at ANW.  These rotations are organized with paired faculty/fellow daily rounding activities. In addition, a faculty member is available every night for emergencies.
• Imaging rotations include echo/TEE, nuclear cardiac imaging, cardiac CT and cardiac MRI.  These rotations are performed under the supervision of an experienced faculty member. Faculty interpretations are performed side-by-side with fellows to review anatomy, physiology and clinical application to the question being addressed by the imaging study.
• Cath lab rotations are supervised with one-on-one faculty/fellow interaction for each case. The pre-catheterization workup performed by the fellow is reviewed with the faculty member to confirm appropriate indications and safety assessments. All aspects of the procedure itself are directly supervised and guided by a faculty member during the case. After the case, findings are reviewed with the fellow.
• Ambulatory clinics are staffed one on one and each patient is discussed with faculty members to review the diagnosis and treatment plan.

All rotations are structured to comply with the duty hours; there is no inhouse call at night. Night call is taken from home 1 - 2 times per week such that the 80 hour per week standard will

not be exceeded. All rotations include one day off per week.

Scholarly Activities

All fellows will be required to participate in scholarly activities. The schedule allows for research performed concurrently with clinical activities as well as one month of dedicated research time. The Program Director will assign research advisers for all fellows during their first year. These advisers will meet with their fellows semiannually. The Program Director's office will also record the nature of all scholarly activities and academic productivity in terms of projects, clinical trials, grants, abstracts, presentations, papers and book chapters.

In addition to specific research activities, all fellows will participate in a semimonthly Journal Club and a monthly Research Conference. Research skills taught as part of the curriculum include critical review of the literature, clinical trial design, hypothesis testing and ethical concerns in human subjects research.

Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) is a major public teaching hospital with many rotating medical students and residents as well as a strong culture of teaching and education. While rotating on the inpatient Cardiology Consultation Service, fellows are expected to be team leaders teaching and supervising the activities of residence and medical students working on the consult service. They are expected to provide support in the form of bedside teaching, interpretation of diagnostic studies, assistance in preparing written and oral presentations, developing treatment plans, interacting with family members, didactic teaching and distribution of pertinent papers from the published literature. Fellows are expected to be a resource for residents and other subspecialty fellows to assist in the diagnosis, management and/or teaching of cardiovascular disease processes.