Infectious Disease Fellowship

General Application Information

The Infectious Disease Fellowship welcomes informal inquiries via email to Dr. Tonya Crook, Program Director, or by calling 717-531-8881. 

The program accepts applications only through the ERAS System.

Interview Process

Candidates selected for interview will be contacted by mid-September to arrange an interview between September and October. All interviews are being held virtually in light of COVID-19.

Virtual Tour

Penn State Health

Penn State Health is a multi-hospital health system serving patients and communities across 29 counties of Pennsylvania. Its mission is to improve health through patient care, research, education and community outreach.

In December 2017, the system partnered with Highmark Health to facilitate creation of a value-based, community care network in the region. The shared goal of Highmark and Penn State Health is to ensure patients in the community are within:

• 10 minutes of a Penn State Health primary care provider
• 20 minutes of Penn State Health specialty care
• 30 minutes of a Penn State Health acute care facility

Learn more about Penn State Health

Penn State Children’s Hospital (left), Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center (center) and Penn State Cancer Institute (right)

Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center

500 University Dr., Hershey, Pa., 17033 (Derry Township, Dauphin County)

• The health system’s 548-bed flagship teaching and research hospital
• The only medical facility in Pennsylvania accredited as both an adult and a pediatric Level I (highest-level) trauma center
• Dedicated surgical, neuroscience, cardiovascular, trauma and medical intensive care units
• Accredited Life Lion critical-care transport providing more than 1,100 helicopter and approximately 750 ground ambulance transports per year
• More than 1,300 faculty members and more than 650 residents and fellows
• Approximately 28,500 admissions, 75,000 emergency department visits, 1.1 million outpatient visits and 32,000 surgical procedures annually
• Designated as a Magnet hospital three times

Learn more about Milton S. Hershey Medical Center

Penn State Children’s Hospital

600 University Dr., Hershey, Pa. 17033 (Derry Township, Dauphin County)

• A five-story, 263,000-square-foot-facility built in 2013
• Three-floor expansion due to open in 2020
• Level IV (highest-level) neonatal intensive care unit
• Level I (highest-level) pediatric trauma center designation
• Dedicated pediatric operating rooms
• More than 150,000 pediatric outpatient visits and approximately 5,000 pediatric patient discharges annually

Learn more about Penn State Children’s Hospital

Welcome to Hershey

More About Hershey

Interested in learning more about living and working in Hershey, Pa.? See details here:

• About the Hershey area
• Benefit and stipend information
• Virtual tour
• GME policies
• Wellness resources
• More about Penn State Health and its locations
• Application and visa requirements

Fellow wellness, including emotional, spiritual, social and physical health, is a crucial component to training and to becoming a professional, compassionate and resilient physician. Self-care is a skill which must be continually practiced and reinforced. Penn State College of Medicine and Penn State Health are committed to addressing wellness, with multiple resources readily available.

Institutional resources

• See Penn State College of Medicine wellness resources here

Graduate medical education resources

• See resident and fellow wellness resources here

Each fellow meets with the program director at the start of the fellowship for arrangement of the first 12 months and preliminary discussion of the second 12 months.

The first 12 months are largely clinical, while the second can be focused in clinical or laboratory research. A third year of fellowship may be available for special projects and will be arranged individually with the program director.

These are the research expectations for fellows in infectious diseases:

• Each fellow will be required to complete at least one clinical quality improvement project during their fellowship.
• Each fellow will be required to complete at least one research project during their fellowship.
• Each fellow is strongly encouraged to have completed a project during their fellowship that will eventually lead to a publication. That publication can be their research project, their clinical quality improvement project or a case report.

Clinical Rotation Overview

The Infectious Disease Fellowship provides extremely strong clinical training in order to ensure that graduating fellows are comfortable and competent at managing complicated clinical problems.

Fellows are required to complete a minimum of 12 months on core clinical rotations. In addition, significant flexibility is present and every effort is made to provide individual fellows with the opportunity to explore their own clinical interests including at the discretion of the program director, arranging outside rotations.

Clinical Experience Overview

• Inpatient consults at Hershey Medical Center (11 months)
• Inpatient consults at UPMC Pinnacle Harrisburg Hospital (one month)
• Outpatient infectious disease clinics (elective) (one month)
• Inpatient/outpatient pediatrics infectious disease elective (one month)
• Fellows’ continuity clinic (one half-day per week throughout duration of fellowship)
• Microbiology

Inpatient Consults at Hershey Medical Center

These are the core rotations for the fellowship program and are divided into two services: General infectious diseases and transplant/orthopaedics infectious diseases.

During the course of the fellowship, each fellow will generally complete six months of general and five months of transplant/orthopaedics infectious diseases.

The general team consists of an infectious diseases attending physician, infectious disease fellow and varying numbers of medical residents and students along with members of allied health services, such as pharmacy. The team is responsible to consult on and follow patients with infectious disease problems throughout all inpatient services at the medical center, including patients with complex medical and surgical infections located in standard and intensive care beds. This includes patients with malignancy, stem cell transplant and other forms of immunocompromise, with the exception of patients with solid organ transplants and orthopaedic infections.

The transplant/orthopaedics infectious disease team rounds with both the transplant infectious disease attending and the orthopaedics infectious disease attending and consults on patients with orthopaedic infections and those who have had or will soon have a solid organ transplant.

Inpatient Consults at UPMC Pinnacle Harrisburg Hospital

UPMC Pinnacle Harrisburg Hospital is a large community-based hospital in downtown Harrisburg, Pa., approximately 12 miles from Hershey Medical Center. Consult cases tend to be somewhat less complex but equally interesting. Fellows working on the Harrisburg Hospital infectious disease service perform in a similar way to the Hershey service.

Outpatient Infectious Disease Clinics

This rotation includes half-day clinic sessions at a variety of clinical sites that include exposure to the following groups of patients: HIV/AIDS, orthopaedic infections, travel medicine and sexually transmitted diseases. Clinic sessions take place at the East Campus (orthopaedic infections), Front Street (HIV/AIDS, travel medicine, STDs) and Lebanon/Altoona (HIV/AIDS). A hepatitis B and C clinic experience with the hepatology service may also be available depending upon availability and continuity clinic schedule conflicts.

Inpatient/Outpatient Pediatrics Infectious Disease Elective

This rotation exposes fellows to the full spectrum of pediatrics infectious diseases and includes inpatient consultations as well as selected outpatient clinics both in general pediatric infectious diseases and HIV/AIDS.

Fellows’ Continuity Clinic

Each infectious disease fellow is assigned to one half-day continuity clinic per week throughout their two years of clinical training. Patients are not pre-selected by disease type, but consist of a mix of HIV and general infectious diseases, including the follow-up of infectious disease inpatients and care of patients receiving outpatient parenteral antibiotics.

Fellows are assigned new patients and are expected to follow these patients during the entire training period. At least one new patient each week is scheduled in every clinic. Supervision of each fellow is provided by a designated faculty member who is constantly present in the clinic.

Antimicrobial Stewardship Rotation

The Infectious Disease Fellowship implemented an antimicrobial stewardship rotation for all fellows beginning in 2015, overseen and instructed by Dr. Michael Katzman, who directs the institution’s Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (ASP). Dr. Katzman has become widely recognized for the organization and discipline he has brought to the ASP. He has been elected to the ranks of Distinguished Educators by Penn State College of Medicine and the program has quickly become a favorite among fellows. Fellows learn as much about infectious disease during their time on this rotation as they do while on the inpatient rotation since, in order to make judgments about the appropriateness of antibiotic use, they need to continuously review treatment guidelines and primary literature. This rotation improves year after year.

Infection Control

Fellows are required to complete the IDSA-sponsored Infection Control Lecture series online; this will generally be accomplished during a non-clinical rotation during the first year.

Fellows are also invited to attend the weekly infection control meetings that take place on Tuesday mornings from 10 to 11 a.m. Specific ongoing infection control issues are discussed and analyzed during this weekly meeting. 

Fellows are also invited to attend the monthly Infection Control Committee meetings, during which general issues of infection control policy and procedures are discussed.

Microbiology

An orientation to the clinical microbiology laboratory takes place each August for first-year fellows. Multidisciplinary microbiology rounds take place each week on Tuesday mornings, during which both faculty and fellows (those on and off clinical service) participate with the microbiology lab staff in reviewing specimens from patients on service and other interesting specimens seen in the lab each week. Rounds are conducted by the director of clinical microbiology and are considered some of the best teaching rounds in the country.

The program uses a high-definition overhead monitor connected to a microscope (to review slides) and to a dissecting scope (to review plates). Graduating fellows finish the program with a broad understanding of clinical microbiology. A separate Friday fellows-only teaching session is conducted by the clinical microbiology team.

Click here to a see a video from the American Society for Microbiology about a clinical microbiology lab.

Outside Rotations

Fellows with a particular interest in a clinical area may arrange to spend an elective period at an outside institution. For example, several fellows have chosen to spend time overseas in a developing country setting, to increase their experience with tropical infections.

Fellows have the opportunity to attend a wide variety of clinical and basic science research conferences in the infectious diseases and microbiology and immunology areas, and the College of Medicine and medical center as a whole, including:

Clinical Infectious Diseases Conference

4 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesdays

Every fellow is expected to attend these conferences each week. This is a clinical conference during which faculty, fellows, residents and students present and discuss clinical cases or guidelines.

Journal Club

12:30 to 1:30 p.m. the second Friday of each month

Every fellow is expected to attend these conferences each month and present on a rotating basis.

Core Curriculum Conference

7:30 to 8:30 a.m. Thursdays

Each fellow is expected to attend these conferences each week. A two-year schedule of infectious disease-related topics is covered during this conference. These topics are meant to inclusively cover all infectious disease-related topics during a two-year fellowship and to serve as a basis for board review.

HIV/AIDS Conferences

8:30 to 10 a.m. the third Friday of each month

This conference consists a schedule of HIV-related topics followed by a team meeting consisting of case presentations primarily involving genotypes/antiviral histories to determine appropriate changes to treatment, as well as interesting cases of AIDS-related complications, along with review of important HIV/AIDS literature. It is conducted by one of the HIV physicians on a rotating basis to review general topics in HIV medicine. A series of introductory lectures for first-year fellows takes place each August.

Research Conference

12:30 to 1:30 p.m. the third Friday of each month

This conference is designed for brainstorming of research and/or program improvement projects for the fellows, monitoring progress of such projects and presenting data (whether preliminary or at the polishing stage before formal presentation or submission for publication).

ACGME Core Competencies Lecture Series

7 a.m. the first Thursday of each month

The objective of the lecture series is to provide an institutionally sponsored didactic program, aimed at covering some of the core topics inherent in the ACGME competencies. These conferences should be considered mandatory. Since they are available online, they can be viewed at a later time. Learn more about the ACGME Core Competencies Lecture Series.

The annual Resident/Fellow Research Day is held each summer on and around the Penn State Health Milton S. Medical Center campus in Hershey, PA.

The intent of the event is to provide an opportunity for residents and fellows to showcase their research accomplishments to their peers in other clinical departments, as well as their colleagues in the basic sciences.

Learn more about Resident/Fellow Research Day here.

Previous presentations from the Infectious Disease Fellowship are listed here.