The MedStar Health - Georgetown University Hospital Fellowship Program in Infectious Diseases
Welcome to the MedStar Georgetown University Infectious Diseases Program!
Our Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital is a two-year accredited program that provides comprehensive training to fulfill and exceed all requirements for Infectious Disease board eligibility. Fellows train at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital with an opportunities to rotate at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and internationally in our Global Health Track. We are accredited for 5 fellows and have two first-year fellows and two second-year fellows. Our fifth fellow is often a fellow who chooses a combined track such as critical care/infectious diseases. Please note that for combined tracks, applicants would apply to outside critical care programs and fulfill the infectious diseases requirements at Georgetown.
Why train here
MedStar Health is the largest healthcare provider in the Maryland and Washington, D.C., region, encompassing 10 hospitals and MedStar Health Research Institute. Our fellows receive intensive training in the inpatient consult service which takes place at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital with over 600 inpatient beds and 1300 physicians. As the tertiary care facility for MedStar, Georgetown University Hospital provides care for a diverse and complicated range of patients including solid organ transplant, general surgery, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, otolaryngology, urology, hematology and oncology, bone marrow transplant, obstetrics and gynecology, critical care, and general medicine. Our fellows also train in the Georgetown Hospital Infectious Diseases outpatient clinic for ambulatory experience. Our clinic provides care for over 900 persons living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus. In addition, the fellows have a dedicated clinics in hepatitis B and C, solid organ transplant infections, HIV continuity care, and travel medicine. The fellows gain competence in HIV-STD care, managing home infusion services, and treatment adherence counseling.
The faculty and fellows in the Division of Infectious Diseases contribute as well to the medical community through volunteer work at the Gift of Peace (Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity) by providing care for indigent patients residing at the Gift of Peace. Fellows are instrumental teachers for the Georgetown School of Medicine students and Internal Medicine residents during clinical rotations and through noon lectures series. In addition, our fellows are full voting members on the MedStar Georgetown Hospital Infection Prevention Committee and Antibiotic Utilization Committee. Fellows gain valuable experience in infection prevention practices, policies, outbreak investigation, antibiotic stewardship, and selecting antimicrobials for the hospital formulary. The Division of Infectious Diseases enjoys a close working partnership with the NIH. Georgetown ID fellows spend a month at the NIH on the consultation service, two weeks at the NIH microbiology course, and participate in a weekly interactive inter-city conference. The NIH ID fellows also rotate for several months at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital on the inpatient service. Our fellows are eligible to participate in the Georgetown Department of Medicine Global Health Track. This program trains participants in global health, ethics, law, policy, tropical diseases through a longitudinal curriculum, elective rotations, and domestic and international electives.
For more information on research, watch our highlights with Dr. Joseph Timpone.
Curriculum
Inpatient Consult Service
The Inpatient Consult Service is a thriving service, split into four separate teams:
- Transplant/immunocompromised ICU Service
- The General Infectious Diseases Service
- Musculoskeletal Service 1 & 2
There is one attending with 1-2 fellows on Transplant/immunocompromised service and general infectious diseases service and visiting medical residents and students. Each inpatient service census typically averages 10-20 patients. All patients followed in the Infectious Diseases clinic that require inpatient care are admitted and covered through the hospital medicine service. Fellows with rotate with one attending on the Musculoskeletal service for 4-8 weeks per year. They care for patients undergoing limb salvage, and consult on infectious diseases associated with plastic surgery and orthopedic surgery. Fellows also may choose to rotate through the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases inpatient consult service and gain valuable experience with infectious complications in bone marrow transplant recipients. Fellows will gain competence in diagnosing and treating infections in the following areas:
- Critical Care
- General Medicine
- Surgery (Transplant, Neurosurgery, General, Otolaryngology, Orthopedics, Plastics, Urology)
- Bone marrow transplant
- Hematology/Oncology
- HIV
- Obstetrics & Gynecology
- Employee Health/Occupational Exposures
Outpatient Clinic
Fellows will have several months each year dedicated solely to outpatient care with an emphasis on HIV management. In addition, fellows become expert in the treatment of patients with a wide range of infectious diseases through work in the following areas:
- General infectious diseases clinic
- Travel clinic
- Tropical medicine clinic
- HIV/STD clinic
- Hepatitis treatment clinic
- Solid organ transplant clinic (pre-transplant evaluation, post transplant infections)
Fellows participate in a weekly half-day continuity clinic through all 24 months of fellowship training unless away on an international rotation. The outpatient experience is supported by a comprehensive support staff that includes a dedicated nursing staff, case management team, and treatment adherence specialist. During the outpatient rotation, fellows will volunteer at the Gift of Peace Hospice.
Research & Scholarly Projects
Our fellowship is committed to providing our fellows with experience in state of the art research and medical education.
Fellows will have research blocks to dedicate time to research projects and quality improvement projects. They are fully funded to attend the following conferences: IDweek, the GW Infectious Diseases board review course, IDSA fellow retreats, the Remington Winter Course in ID, and the annual fellows’ course in healthcare epidemiology, infection prevention & antimicrobial stewardship. The last course is a 3-day training course with interactive sessions on basic healthcare epidemiology, infection prevention strategies, healthcare-associated infections and problem pathogens.
Our fellows have won numerous department of medicine teaching awards for the lectures and teaching that they provide to medical students and residents. The fellows present monthly at inter-city conferences, resident noon conference, pulmonary-ID conference or dedicated ID conferences. By graduation, our fellows have polished teaching portfolios and are experienced educators.
FY21 Fellow Stipends:
- PGY-4 $73,000.00
- PGY-5 $76,000.00
Additional Benefits Information
For additional benefits information please visit the MedStar Health GME website. There you can find additional information and documents such as our House Staff Manual, Sample Contract and the Benefits offered by MedStar Health.
Please Note: Georgetown University Hospital constantly seeks to improve employee benefits, all benefits are subject to change. These documents are intended as an overview of benefits for your convenience.
For additional information you may also contact the Benefits Office at (703) 558-1300.
Didactics
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | |
| 8:30AM | Morning report | Journal club or Research+ | AUC | ||
| 12:00pm | State of the Art/ Board Review | Infection Prevention or Pulm-ID | DOM Grand Rounds | Inter-city ID conference | |
| 7:00 pm | GWIDS* |
*Greater Washington Infectious Diseases Society
The didactics are complemented by:
- Dahlgren Library Access (can be accessed from home)
- Dahlgren Memorial Library is committed to providing a comprehensive online health sciences collection for the Georgetown University Medical Center community. Electronic resources consist of over: 6302 journals, 142 databases, 18 point of care tools, 20 Medical Apps, 4,806 online books
- Access to PubMed
- Access to UpToDate
- IDSA membership which includes access to the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Infectious Diseases
Research
The Division of Infectious Diseases and Travel Medicine is committed to participation in state-of-the-art research projects and clinical trials in therapeutics for the treatment of infectious diseases. The overarching goals of our research endeavors are, the to promote translational science into the clinical practice of infectious diseases, study and development of novel agents to treat infectious diseases, the study of epidemiological questions in infectious diseases that affect our communities, and to recruit and enroll a diverse patient population and the medically underserved into promising clinical trials.
Our research program is comprised of the following components:
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Clinical Trials Unit
Our Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) is comprised of experienced research coordinators and regulatory affairs personnel who are dedicated to the recruitment of patients into therapeutic drug trials of novel agents. Under the direction of Dr. Princy Kumar, the CTU performs clinical trials in all phases of drug development, from Phase I through Phase III. The CTU has particular expertise in performing pharmacokinetic studies for innovative antiretroviral agents for the treatment of HIV. MGUH has an inpatient Clinical Research Unit (CRU) where complex Phase 1 trials can be performed. Over the last 20+ years the Division of Infectious Diseases and Travel Medicine has received both federal funding as an AIDS Clinical Trials Unit (ACTU) and funding from the pharmaceutical industry to develop new treatments for HIV and its complications, HCV, C. Difficile Colitis, CLABSIs, and most recently, SARS-CoV-2 Infections. Our current research portfolio is extensive as it encompasses nearly 50 ongoing studies. For more information regarding our clinical trials unit, please contact katie.fan@medstar.net. -
Fellowship Research Program
All of our Infectious Disease Fellows participate in clinical research and have been successful in publishing and presenting their work at national meetings including ID Week, CROI, AASLD, and the American Transplant Congress. They have been involved in studies regarding multi-drug resistant organisms, HIV associated complications, global health, and infections in solid organ transplant recipients. Below is a list of some of the fellow's publications and presentation.
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MedStar Health Research Institute (MHRI)
As a fellow at MGUH, one has access to all of the resources provided by MHRI. All fellows have 30 hours of free biostatistical support from MHRI for each project that he or she participates in. Additionally, MHRI has an extensive patient clinical database throughout the entire MedStar system that can be used for data mining to answer a clinical research question. -
Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS)/Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS)
Since 1994 Georgetown has been a site for the NIH funded Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) and combined with the prior Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) in 2019. This prospective observational, longitudinal cohort study of persons with and without HIV is focused on studying the comorbidities (including cardiovascular disease, metabolic complications, etc), neurocognitive complications as well as psychosocial aspects of HIV infection. The MWCCS provides well curated data and repository samples used by local and national investigators.
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DC CFAR
The District of Columbia Center for AIDS Research (DC CFAR) is a unique city-wide consortium representing 230 HIV investigators at eight collaborating research institutions in Washington, D.C. The DC CFAR is a part of a larger network of Centers for AIDS Research (CFARs) funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide scientific leadership and institutional infrastructure for HIV/AIDS research. Georgetown has been an integral part of the DC CFAR under the scientific leadership of Drs. Princy Kumar and Seble Kassaye. For more information, please visit the DC CFAR website. -
DC Cohort
The DC Cohort is a longitudinal research project that collects clinical data from approximately 10,000 consenting people living with HIV receiving care at fifteen HIV clinics in the District of Columbia. The DC Cohort is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The primary project goal is to improve the quality of care and treatment of people living with HIV receiving care at large clinics in the District of Columbia. Georgetown contributes to this database and as a result faculty investigators have had access to this data set and have been successful in presenting and publishing clinical research on HIV infected patients in the District of Columbia. This database is regularly updated by out Data Manager, Madhuri Natarajan who also provides statistical support for both our faculty and fellows. For more information please visit the DC Cohort Website.
Looking Ahead
The Division of Infectious Diseases will continue to develop and participate in clinical studies that fulfill its research agenda and serve the patient population it cares for.
Application Information
Fellowship Application Requirements
We are seeking talented, motivated individuals who are looking for an academic, rigorous, and diverse clinical infectious diseases training program. Applicants must be eligible to sit for the ABIM Internal Medicine Boards. Only J1 visas are sponsored through MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. We currently do not have the ability to sponsor H1B visas. We look forward to the opportunity to meet you and the application process is described below.
Application for the July 2023 cycle
Fellowship application begins in July (when ERAS opens). Interviews will be scheduled on a Wednesday between September – October.
This application cycle, all interviews will be virtual via Zoom (new window).
How to Apply through ERAS
You should apply for the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program at Georgetown University Hospital through the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS). ERAS is an internet-based application process developed by the Association of American Medical Colleges to transmit fellowship applications, letters of recommendation, Program Director letters, medical transcripts and other supporting credentials from applicants, residency programs, and medical schools to fellowship program directors using the Internet. Upon receiving your application through ERAS, our program coordinator will contact candidates about interviews. Interviews are scheduled during September and October. Visit the ERAS website for information about the process or to register.
The “Match”
The Georgetown Fellowship participates 100% in the match and is “all in”. We feel that the match is the ideal opportunity for candidates to find the best training program for their needs and for programs to find the best learners for their program. Once you have applied to the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program and interviewed with our faculty, fellows, and staff, we hope that you will rank Georgetown at the top of your list for training programs in Infectious Diseases.
Georgetown participates in the Medical Specialties Matching Program (MSMP) in Infectious Diseases. This is a computerized venue for matching an applicant’s preferences for fellowship positions with program directors preferences for applications. Visit the NRMP website for information or to register.
Important Dates for July 2024 cycle applicants:
- Infectious Disease ERAS Application Process opens July 5, 2023
- Schedule Interviews at Georgetown: end of August 2023
- Registration for NRMP Match List August 23, 2023
- ID interviews at Georgetown: September/October 2023
- NRMP Rank Order List deadline: November 15, 2023
- NRMP Match Day: November 29, 2023
- Fellows begin their Infectious Disease Program on July 7, 2024
Visa Policy: Only J1 visas are sponsored through MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. We currently do not have the ability to sponsor H1B visas.
Contact us
Gayle P. Balba, MD
Fellowship Program Director
Associate Professor of Medicine
Director of the Hepatitis Clinic
MedStar Georgetown University Hospital
3800 Reservoir Road, N.W. – Pasquerilla Health Center, 5th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20007
Fax: 1-877-665-8072
Email: Gayle.P.Balba@gunet.georgetown.edu
Lisa Townsend
Fellowship Program Administrator
MedStar Georgetown University Hospital
3800 Reservoir Road NW – Pasquerilla Health Center, 5th Floor
Washington, DC 20007
Phone: 202-444-4034
Fax: 202-444-7797
Email: Lisa.Townsend@gunet.georgetown.edu