Hematology/Oncology Fellowship Career Development

Intensive introductory lecture series aimed to facilitate the transition to clinical Hematology/Oncology for first-year fellows.

Weekly case-based conference presentation, presented by first-year fellows. Detailed case-based discussion of clinicopathologic and therapeutic considerations and including discussion of landmark literature in the relevant disease type.

Weekly faculty- and fellow-led conference emphasizing a broad range of topic- and case-focused discussions relevant to hematology/oncology diagnostics and therapeutics. This conference series includes: Morbidity, Mortality, and Improvement as well as Molecular Tumor Board sessions.

Monthly fellow-led discussions presented by second and third year fellows featuring a prominent publication from contemporary hematology/oncology literature

Weekly faculty- and fellow-led case-based conference exploring diagnostic and therapeutic issues across classical hematology and hematologic malignancies. This conference series includes expert review of pathologic specimens, peripheral blood smears, coagulation studies, and issues in blood banking.

Bimonthly series encouraging candid discussions between faculty and fellows and reflections on key aspects of personal and professional. Topics covered include: transitioning from fellowship to your career, seeking and sustaining mentorship, managing your time and your life, key career development and funding opportunities to pursue during fellowship training, careers in Hematology/Oncology roundtable, clinical trial and drug development pipelines, seeking gainful employment post-fellowship.

Overseen by faculty mentors from Hematology, Oncology, Palliative Care, Psychiatry, and Social Work, these are closed-door, small group discussions primarily for 1st year fellows. Through reflective exercises and didactics, participants develop skills in patient-centered communication and compassionate care while learning strategies to build and maintain a sustainable and gratifying career as a physician. Discussions cover a variety of psychosocial concerns that arise in the care of patients with hematologic and oncologic illness.

Bimonthly conferences welcoming content experts from around the country and focusing on major clinical and scientific advances in hematology and oncology.

Numerous weekly multidisciplinary conferences are held throughout the Divisions and incorporating both case presentations and didactic content with expert input from disease-focused multidisciplinary care teams from medical oncology, malignant hematology, surgical oncology, radiation oncology, diagnostic and interventional radiology, and pathology.

The Department of Medicine’s weekly Medical Grand Rounds lectures cover a broad range of timely and clinically-important topics. Speakers are drawn from BIDMC, Harvard Medical School, and other regional and national institutions. Along with named lectureships, Medical Grand Rounds includes the BIDMC-Annals of Internal Medicine “Beyond the Guidelines” series, which uses a case-based approach to address questions related to new clinical guidelines.

An informal monthly meeting bringing together fellows across all years with program leadership. Over dinner each month, the “fellowship family” gathers to reflect on issues relating to peer well-being, systems-based practice, and quality improvement.

Each fellow will form an advisory committee starting in year 1 of fellowship training. Each Advisory Council will consist of: 1) fellowship program leadership, 2) program-appointed scholarship advisor, and 3) fellow-appointed clinical and scholarship advisor(s).

Each fellow will meet individually with fellowship program leadership at least biannually and at least annually with their Advisory Council team during all years of fellowship training. The Advisory Council will review career development and scholarly efforts and identify areas for continued progress and growth to ensure that each fellow is achieving their defined goals during fellowship training.

By year 2 of fellowship training, each fellow will select defined area(s) for scholarly development, including: Clinical Investigation, Laboratory-Based Investigation, Patient Safety & Quality Improvement, Medical Education, Clinical Practice, and others. These domains are not mutually exclusive, and the program is committed to collaborating with and supporting fellows identifying other novel areas of individual interest.

Within each pathway, individual mentorship and Advisory Council meetings will review planned and completed efforts relating to: clinical development, scholarly development, and scholarly output. This includes identifying and pursuing key opportunities for formal skill development in the area(s) of interest, grant writing and funding, and presentation and publication of scholarly work, amongst others.

This is integrated into the weekly morning curriculum for the fellowship program. In collaboration with faculty mentors from across the Division, the Cancer Center, and other institutions/organizations, fellows engage in structured discussions surrounding key topics directly relevant to their professional development, including: finding mentors, defining areas of clinical and research interest, identifying key opportunities for coursework/skill development, grant writing and funding, clinical trials pipeline, exploring diverse types of careers within hematology/oncology, and seeking and negotiating gainful employment.

Friday mornings will be dedicated to targeted didactics in Hematology. Following the weekly Hematology Conference, fellows in the Hematology Track will engage in a rotating curriculum probing more deeply into topics within classical hematology and other hematology-affiliated fields, leveraging clinical expertise from across departments within BIDMC and other locoreginal Hematology programs.

• Northeast Collaborative Hematology Curriculum: Every other month, Hematology Track fellows and faculty from programs across the Northeast (Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s’ Hospital, Yale, BIDMC) will gather for a case-based education session on clinical areas of complexity and nuance within classical hematology. On a rotating basis, sessions will be facilitated by educational leaders from each institution.
• Blood Bank Curriculum: Led by faculty from the BIDMC Department of Pathology, Hematology Track fellows and pathology residents will gather for instruction in topics related to transfusion medicine, blood typing, and blood banking.
• Hematopathology Curriculum: Led by faculty from the BIDMC Department of Pathology, Hematology Track fellows and pathology residents will gather to review topics in laboratory medicine and hematopathology, including: flow cytometry, processes of laboratory testing, and pre- and post-analytical variables and errors.

During the 2nd year of training, fellows will participate in the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Core Curriculum (bi-weekly on Friday afternoons) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) Geriatrics Co-Curriculum (monthly on Friday mornings), joining the learning community of Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellows in the BIDMC-VA program and Geriatric Medicine fellows in the HMS Geriatrics fellowship. The combined curriculum is organized into longitudinal strands covering core topics in symptom management and systems-based practice, serious illness communication, medical education, and quality improvement/patient safety.

Read more about our program’s Hospice and Palliative Medicine curriculum here.