Medical Toxicology Fellowship Curriculum
Clinical
The fellow will be responsible for bedside consultations and daily rounds on patients at Lehigh Valley Health Network’s (LVHN) two main campuses: Lehigh Valley Hospital (LVH)–Cedar Crest and LVH–Muhlenberg, as well as telemedicine consultations on the range of sites within LVHN, including: LVH–Hecktown Oaks, LVH–Carbon, LVH–Pocono, LVH–Schuylkill, LVH–Hazleton and LVH–Dickson City. The fellow will take home-call no more than 10 days per month and be responsible for all patients on our consult service during that time. Additionally, while on call, the fellow will field telephone consultations from our in-network sites. Finally, our toxicology fellows will see patients in our outpatient toxicology clinic, which currently operates one day per month.
Didactics
Core Lectures
Given the sharp learning curve of the toxicology fellow, the first two months of each academic year comprise daily core lectures designed to equip the incoming fellows with the fundamentals of pharmacology, physiology, biochemistry and high-yield clinical toxicology content areas.
Chapter Reviews
There will be weekly chapter reviews with a faculty member. “Goldfrank’s Toxicologic Emergencies” is used to cover the core content of clinical toxicology over a 24-month period. “Clinical Environmental Health and Toxic Exposures” is the primary text used to cover occupational and environmental core content. Faculty also lead regular sessions focused on toxicology board-review. Weekly journal club discussion is led by the fellows.
Conferences
The fellow will participate in case review and didactics at the Poison Control Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Furthermore, there are also weekly small-group conferences at LVHN where the fellow will present a brief outline of a topic within the toxicology core content. Additionally, there are presentations and reviews of both core and recent journal articles by other participants in the toxicology rotation. The fellow will also participate in national webinars hosted by the American College of Medical Toxicology.
Teaching
The fellow will have ample opportunity to develop and refine teaching and presentation skills, including bedside clinical teaching to medical students and residents who rotate on the medical toxicology service. Fellows also lecture at our emergency medicine residency grand rounds. Additionally, there are other opportunities for lecturing at local emergency medical services/continuing medical education events, LVHN-sponsored community outreach forums and other graduate medical education programs within our network.
Scholarly Activity
The fellow will complete at least one scholarly project with the guidance of the medical toxicology faculty and support from our departmental faculty and support staff. This scholarly project may be in an area of interest for the fellow, such as protocol development, quality improvement, research or design and development of educational resources. In addition to this scholarly project, there are many opportunities for other publications such as case reports, review articles, book chapters and participation in the myriad other research projects occurring within our department. Fellows will present their project at relevant departmental or national meetings.