Infectious Disease Fellowship

Clinical Training Settings

Inpatient Care: The core of the training program is the inpatient service at Seattle Children's Hospital, a quaternary care center with a referral base including five states. Find more data on our patient demographics here. The spectrum of disease is broad, ranging from infections in healthy children to those in bone marrow or solid organ transplantation recipients.

Outpatient Care: Fellows participate in the outpatient management of patients in the General Infectious Diseases, HIV/Virology and Immunology Clinics. Fellows evaluate new consults and provide continuity of care for patients discharged from the inpatient services.

Clinical Laboratory Training: Fellows participate in formal laboratory training sessions in the microbiology and virology labs during their first year. This intensive training experience is complemented by regular interaction with the microbiology labs during the inpatient rotations at Seattle Children's Hospital.

Clinical Training Elements

The majority of clinical training for fellows occurs in the first year of fellowship, but some clinical training can occur during all three training years. This training includes:

Inpatient Consultative Service:

32-40 weeks on inpatient consult service at Seattle Children's Hospital 4 weeks of training may be spent at University-affiliated hospitals including Harborview Medical Center (where the regional trauma and burn units are located) and University of Washington/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (FHCRC) Bone Marrow Unit Additional elective rotations are arranged on an individual basis.

Clinical laboratory training:

• 2 weeks of rotations in diagnostic bacteriology, mycology and virology laboratories

Outpatient Clinics:

• 4 months of outpatient virology / infectious diseases & immunology clinics

Our Pediatric Infectious Diseases fellowship offers a comprehensive curriculum integrating clinical case discussions with weekly didactic sessions aligned with the American Board of Pediatrics' Pediatric Infectious Diseases content specifications. Alongside approximately quarterly sessions in professional development, grant writing, and Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion initiatives, our program includes weekly clinical cases, city-wide infectious diseases clinical case conferences, and board review topics. Additional monthly activities include journal club and integrated quality improvement/antimicrobial stewardship conferences. Primarily led by faculty and invited experts, fellows also contribute by developing and presenting their own lectures and research conferences, enhancing their teaching portfolio.

A scholarly project is required by the ABP for all fellows completing Pediatric ID fellowship, but the type of work undertaken will vary across fellows and between our Clinician Educator and Academic Research track fellows. Thus, we tailor an individualized program to provide each fellow a strong foundation to build an academic career and result in a scholarly work product as defined by the ABP. Most often fellows achieve this through a publication in a peer-reviewed journal by the completion of fellowship.

Research Training Elements

Mentor Selection: Selection of a research project prior to acceptance to the fellowship program is not required. During the interview process, applicants are exposed to the breadth of faculty expertise available in our program and potential research projects. Upon acceptance into our program, fellows work with the program director and the research director to develop their ideas and research focus further, and begin to identify specific mentors at the University of Washington, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Seattle Children’s Research Institute, or the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Doing so provides fellows extra time to begin learning a new field and considering projects, which helps them use their fellowship time most efficiently. The fellowship director and research director discuss training expectations with both the mentor and fellow to optimize the research project selected by the fellow.

Project Scope: Fellows may work with any University of Washington faculty member including our core pediatric infectious disease faculty listed below. Fellows may select projects related to but not limited to basic research, medical research, patient-oriented research, quality improvement, antimicrobial stewardship, global health, or population-based research. Academic Research track fellows are supported by an NIH training-grant to train fellows in basic and/or translational research. Clinician Educator track fellows are supported by Seattle Children’s Hospital. For all fellows, the research project work should be able to be completed within two years and result in a publication in a peer-reviewed journal by the completion of fellowship. For Academic Research track fellows, the project should typically also provide a foundation for a career development grant and future research programs. When needed, our program works closely with fellows to secure funding for a third year of focused research time immediately following fellowship completion.

Coursework: Research is supplemented by coursework at the University of Washington as necessary. Fellows may pursue a master’s degree (such as MPH, MS, etc) if the coursework is appropriate for their career goals. Degree completion takes approximately two years.

Sample Research Trajectory

The following sample assumes a fellow without prior research experience who will complete clinical training over three years.

Before starting fellowship

Fellowship acceptance--December

• Investigate expertise of interest in Seattle
• Discuss potential research projects with Fellowship Director/Research Director
• Contact potential mentors and discuss possible projects (contact facilitated by the fellowship program)
• Narrow scope of research projects prior to starting fellowship

Year 1:

July/August:

• Interview potential research mentors if needed and select a research project
• Begin reading relevant background material to become familiar with the field
• Begin research and form a scholarly oversight committee
• Review format and process of grants and papers during orientation

September-December:

• Continue reading and conducting initial studies
• Clearly state research questions and specific aims of your project; Begin generating data
• Present research plan to your scholarly oversight committee
• Write the background section of future papers/grants
• Begin career planning

January-June:

• Present first research conference at Pediatric ID Research Conference
• Continue to generate data, identify data needed for grants/publications and begin acquiring these data, troubleshoot research approach
• Begin planning/submission process of abstracts to national meetings
• Meet with scholarly oversight committee to discuss career progress, presentation at meetings, writing grants and papers

Year 2:

July-December:

• Continue acquiring data; write methods sections for grants/publications
• Identify and submit to national meetings appropriate for presentation of research
• Identify the data required for a publication, and continue acquiring these data

January-June:

• By the middle of the 2nd year of training, fellows should begin to design their own research plan in conjunction with their research mentor
• Write a preliminary outline of the publication of work done in fellowship (more if you are able)
• Submit publication by end of second year if possible
• Present work at the Pediatric Infectious Disease Research Conference
• Present preliminary data at a national meeting
• Begin organizing preliminary data and drafting Hypotheses and Aims for a career development award from the NIH or a private foundation
• Discuss career plans with program director, SOC and research mentor
• Plan to submit Career Development Awards

Year 3:

July-December:

• Submit initial proposal for a Career Development Award
• Continue to generate data for publications and focused on Aims in grant proposals
• Submit publication if not done or complete additional papers as appropriate
• Discuss next steps in career planning with program director, and research mentors
• Present work at a national meeting, network, continue to explore career opportunities

December-June:

• Finalize career plans including funding options, additional grant submissions if necessary

Faculty Mentors
List of Faculty Mentors (.xls) 

Additional Resources

• Allergy & Infectious Diseases (AID)
• Seattle Children's Research Division (SCRI)
• Center for Global Infectious Disease Research (CGIDR)
• Center for Clinical and Translational Research (CCTR)
• Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
• University of Washington - Department of Global Health
• Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation