Neonatal Perinatal Medicine Fellowship

Each fellow is paired with a preceptor/mentor, who is a member of the faculty. Selection of the mentor-fellow pair is based upon mutually expressed interest and complimentary personality traits. The mentor oversees the clinical and research progress of the fellow. In addition, the fellow may choose an investigator to work with at the medical school, in another department, or at the hospital, for research specific to his or her interests. In addition, all fellows have and assigned “career mentor” from the senior faculty to help them navigate through the difficult but rewarding experience of our demanding training program and to keep the individual fellow’s long-term career goal in focus during the 3-year fellowship training.

Fellows attend and help (with faculty supervision) direct daily bedside teaching- and work-rounds while on clinical service. At LAC+USC Medical Center (the primary fellowship program site) or at CHLA, the fellows attend a weekly mandatory 2-hour core-curriculum conference where the topics in the field of neonatal-perinatal medicine recommended by the Neonatal-Perinatal Board are being presented by faculty members. The fellows also attend the morning case conferences two times a week (Monday and Wednesday), where they present clinical cases and their management for review by faculty and for academic and research-associated discourse. Fellows also participate and present in our weekly physiology conferences (Tuesdays) and monthly journal club meetings; weekly neonatal-perinatal statistics rounds and high-risk OB conferences; bioethics and discharge planning conferences; and perinatal high risk clinics as well as follow-up clinics for premature infants under 1500 grams. In addition, fellows attend specific courses on research design and protocols and the writing of research papers during their training as part of the core curriculum series.

Each fellow must attend a weeklong intensive ECMO training course at our hospital at least once during fellowship.

Each fellow attends a weeklong functional echocardiography training course at least once during fellowship. Organized by Dr. Bijan Siassi, Director of Functional Echocardiography Course at USC Keck School of Medicine, this annual course is attended by neonatologists from the US and abroad. The course is given by faculty from USC Keck School of Medicine, CHLA Division of Cardiology and other programs.

In addition, fellows in our program are encouraged to spend 1-2.5 months of one-on-one teaching rotation with Dr. Mac Ebrahimi, the associate director of the functional echocardiography program.

Fellows develop a project plan in collaboration with a faculty member (most frequently his/her mentor) for basic, translational, clinical or epidemiology research, by the end of the first year. Each fellow spends at 6-12 weeks in the basic research laboratory to gain fan insight into basic research and critical thinking. Bench research in molecular biology is then available depending on the particular interests of the neonatal fellow. Fellows will be expected to have presentations at local and national meetings by the end of the second year; in addition, each fellow is expected to complete a minimum of one research paper by the end of the third year of his/her training.

The neonatal program consists of clinical service duties at: 

• LAC+USC Medical Center
• Children's Hospital Los Angeles 
• Good Samaritan Hospital

Fellows spend a 2 to 4-week rotation in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit  at Children's Hospital Los Angeles to gain valuable experience in the pre- and post-operative management of neonates requiring cardiac surgery. With an attending neonatologist, they provide consulting clinical service for neonates in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit.

Three attending neonatologists direct the clinical care every two week bloack at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, two attendings at the LAC+USC Medical Center site, while one attending neonatologist directs the clinical care at Good Samaritan Hospital. They round daily with their teams consisting of neonatal-perinatal fellows and pediatric residents and/or neonatal nurse practitioners. Our units are equipped with state-of-the-art cardiac and general ultrasound equipment and the fellows utilize these imaging and diagnostic tools within the framework of the Developmental Cardiovascular Program. All three sites offer Therapeutic Hypothermia for neonates with HIE.