Curriculum

You’ll be exposed to every facet of cardiovascular medicine during your training, building a strong foundation on which to build your practice.

Supervised by our faculty, you’ll train in diverse clinical sites as you care for patients with every degree of clinical acuity.

Our conferences focus on comprehensive core topics in cardiovascular medicine, preparing you to succeed on your certification exam and in your career. 

Your first year starts you on the path to proficiency in a number of procedures, including cardiac catheterization. You’ll also acquire a broad range of skills in cardiology’s noninvasive techniques and tests.

You’ll gain experience with hospital consultations in two distinct hospital environments. In your continuity clinic, you’ll care for, on average, five to six patients per half-day shift.

We dedicate four weeks of your first-year schedule to research. Most of our fellows continue with their projects during second- and third-year electives or, if they’ve selected a clinical project, during the relevant clinical rotation.

Throughout residency, you may take your vacation as a single four-week block or break it up as you see fit.

As a second-year fellow, you’ll continue refining your clinical and procedural skills in all of the areas covered during your first-year training. You’ll gain more hands-on experience with sophisticated interventional procedures and be called upon to assume greater clinical responsibilities.

In addition, you’ll monitor patients with implantable devices and train in our electrophysiology lab. You may take your required rotation in pediatric cardiology during your second year as well, though we give you the flexibility to defer to your third year of training, if you’re interested in taking an advanced imaging elective (cardiac MRI/cardiac CTA) as a second-year fellow.

You’ll have the freedom to explore specialized interests and amplify your skill set with electives. Depending on how you structure your vacation schedule, you may take a total of six to nine modules of electives during your second and third years of training. You may also take additional rotations as electives.

During your final fellowship year, you’ll work toward becoming an independent practitioner or prepare for further training.

Whether you strive to gain additional procedural experience, take more rotations in a particular field or get ahead of the curve for a subspecialty fellowship, we’ll tailor your elective schedule to address your goals.

Your required third-year rotations will help you meet your procedural requirements, though you’ll likely exceed them, thanks to the high procedural volume at our training sites.

Your third year will also see you completing your research project. We encourage our fellows to publish and present their findings.

Rather than a graduated call system, we distribute your call schedule evenly throughout the year, so you develop clinical independence and avoid excessive fatigue.

All of your call takes place from your home. Most calls involve discussing new admissions with the admitting resident, discussing potential transfers to the service and stat consults.

When on call, you typically don’t have to come in more often than once a week.

You’ll only take call during your clinical service rotations — that is, while on the telemetry and consult services and in the CCU.

During your CCU and telemetry service rotations, you’ll take call every other night.

When you’re on the consult service at the Buffalo VA Medical Center, you’ll be on call every night, though you’ll experience a relatively low call volume. You won’t take any call when on the consult service at the Buffalo General Medical Center.

Our didactic curriculum contextualizes your clinical training, prepares you for your certification exam and keeps you current in our field.

Our conferences cover:

• imaging
• research
• journal review
• core topics
• interesting cases

You’ll teach medical students and residents throughout your fellowship, typically during your clinical cardiology rotations.

One semester per year, you’ll teach second-year medical students during their Clinical Practice of Medicine course.

Your responsibilities include:

• identifying patients for students to examine
• reviewing their patient histories and physical exam notes
• helping them refine their write-ups
• evaluating them at the end of the semester

Once a year, you’ll review a chest pain case with fourth-year medical students in an advanced medicine rotation.

We always make sure that your teaching schedule accommodates your clinical and personal schedules. For example, you won’t have formal teaching responsibilities when you’re in the CCU. And if you need to use vacation time when you’re assigned to teach, we’ll provide coverage for you.