Didactics

Teaching is one of the priorities of our Division, which is reflected in the activities organized for ID fellows. The goals of the educational activities are to provide the fellows with the most updated information on core topics of Infectious Diseases, teach them how to critically analyze the literature, and give them an opportunity to polish their presentation and teaching skills.

Core Curriculum Series – presented weekly by faculty members. The series provides didactic lectures on a variety of topics in ID and prepares the fellows for their clinical activities and for the board exam. A few sessions are dedicated to board review. During the summer, the schedule is focused on the new first-year fellows with an intensive course on the most common infections encountered by an Infectious Diseases consultant as well as basic topics on antimicrobials and microbiology.

ID Journal Club – presented by fellows, who are assigned to a faculty member for each session. The role of the faculty mentor is to guide the fellow with article selection, making sure that it is relevant to a general ID audience, data interpretation and conclusion.

ID Grand Rounds – meets weekly. Presentations are varied and include case discussion accompanied by pertinent review of the literature, faculty research in progress, and state of the art presentations by invited guests. Each of the services are assigned to present cases on a rotating basis. Well-renowned national and international guests in different fields of ID are invited to present and spend the day with the fellows.

HIV Conference – held three times weekly. HIV providers as well as other faculty present on a wide range of HIV-associated topics, such as updated guidelines, genotype case discussions, HCV/HIV Co infection, transplantation in HIV(+), reporting news from conferences, and HIV-associated pregnancy.

Transplant ID Core Meeting – meets monthly. Recent advances in the field of infections in solid organ and stem cell transplantation are discussed.

Transplant ID Teleconference – Presentation of interesting cases encountered on solid organ and bone marrow transplant ID services in three major transplant centers: University of Pittsburgh medical center TID group, Cleveland Clinic and the University of Sao Paolo, Brasil.