General Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program

Inpatient Consult Services

General Infectious Diseases Consult Service (Teaching)

This inpatient consult service includes a multidisciplinary team with an attending, a fellow, 1-2 residents and/or medical students, and infectious diseases pharmacists.

Fellows are responsible for managing the team including teaching residents and medical students. Fellows also manage a varied patient population, including:

• Opportunistic infections in HIV/AIDS
• Neurosurgical infections
• Surgical, trauma, burn, and medical ICU infections
• Hepatology and GI-related infections
• Cardiology-associated infections
• Bone and joint infections

Transplant Infectious Diseases Service:

Our transplant ID service provides consultation for:

• Solid organ transplant recipients
• Bone marrow transplant patients
• Hematologic malignancies
• Patients with left ventricular assist devices (LVADs)

Fellows gain valuable experience managing immunocompromised patients with complex infectious diseases.

Ambulatory & Continuity Clinic Training:

Fellows participate in weekly continuity clinics focused on:

• Longitudinal HIV care
• General infectious diseases
• VA infectious diseases clinic, including travel medicine
• Hospital discharge follow-up
• New patient evaluations

This longitudinal outpatient experience helps fellows build confidence in managing chronic infectious diseases and continuity-based patient care.

Specialized Rotations

All fellows complete rotations in:

• Clinical microbiology
• Antimicrobial stewardship
• Hospital epidemiology and infection control
• Outpatient/Telemedicine elective with experiences in wound care, Hepatitis C, C difficile, and ID telemedicine

Case of the Week (COW) Conference

One of the division’s most popular educational traditions, COW Conference is a weekly, fellow-led discussion centered around challenging clinical cases. Fellows present complex cases, guide differential diagnosis discussions, and review relevant literature alongside faculty.

This interactive format encourages clinical reasoning, collaboration, and academic discussion in a supportive learning environment.

Fellow Didactics

Weekly didactic sessions led by infectious diseases faculty cover core topics including:

• HIV management
• Antimicrobial resistance
• Transplant infectious diseases
• Central nervous system infections
• Emerging infectious diseases

Incoming fellows also participate in an intensive “high-yield” orientation curriculum designed to build a strong clinical foundation early in training.

Additional Conferences

Fellows also participate in:

• Infectious Diseases Grand Rounds
• HIV Collaborative Conference
• Journal Club
• Visiting speaker presentations
• Research and quality improvement discussions

Research is a core component of fellowship training at MUSC. Fellows receive dedicated research time, faculty mentorship, and academic support to pursue projects aligned with their interests and career goals.

Our goal is for fellows to present their work at national scientific meetings and submit first-author manuscripts for publication.

Recent fellow research projects include:

• Bacteremia rates in heart transplant patients on dialysis
• Persistent MRSA bacteremia treatment
• Invasive fungal infections in heart transplant recipients
• Efficacy and Safety of Novel Injectable ART
• Candida auris organ donor transmission
• CMV Resistance in Transplant Patients

Fellows interested in expanded research training may customize their fellowship experience to pursue additional scholarly opportunities.

Why Choose the MUSC Infectious Diseases Fellowship?

A Balanced Fellowship Experience

The MUSC Infectious Diseases Fellowship combines:

• Robust inpatient and outpatient clinical training
• Dedicated research and scholarly time
• Strong faculty mentorship
• Exposure to underserved and medically complex populations
• Specialized training opportunities across the full spectrum of infectious diseases

Our fellows graduate prepared to thrive in careers spanning:

• Academic infectious diseases
• Antimicrobial stewardship
• Infection prevention and hospital epidemiology
• HIV medicine
• Transplant infectious diseases
• Tropical medicine and global health
• Public health
• Private practice
• Clinical and translational research

Since 1976 the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Infectious Diseases Fellowship has trained fellows to become experts in adult infectious diseases. This extensive training encompasses a broad range of areas, including general ID, transplant ID, HIV, clinical microbiology, outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT), antibiotic stewardship, hospital epidemiology, infection control, and tele-ID.

The MUSC ID Fellowship offers excellent clinical training. As a regional referral hospital and highly ranked transplant center (the only transplant center in SC), MUSC exposes fellows to both common and less common pathology, including transplant and immunosuppressed populations, with a wide array of disease processes. South Carolina has a large HIV population and the infectious diseases division serves ~2,000 HIV patients. Currently, there is less exposure to travel medicine than in the past, but fellows still receive this training in the VA clinic.

Two-to-three fellows match each year.

Fellows spend around 26 weeks each year on inpatient consult services, either the Teaching Service (general infectious diseases at MUSC), Transplant Service, or VA Service (general infectious diseases at the VA hospital, which is across the street from the MUSC hospitals). These occur in two-week blocks, switching Tuesdays, usually with a non-inpatient rotation in between. Fellows cover one of the two weekends while on inpatient consult services. The Teaching Service is capped at 20 patients with a resident, or 15 patients without a resident, with general ID consults also covered by a non-teaching (attending and APP) service.

The other half of the year, fellows have a variety of rotations, including microbiology, antimicrobial stewardship, hospital epidemiology and infection control, outpatient / tele-ID, and research. Each fellow has three weeks of vacation per year.

Each fellow has their own weekly continuity clinic on either Thursday or Friday morning, as well as VA clinic while on VA Service or non-consult services.

Inpatient consult services:

• Teaching Service (with attending, resident(s) and/or medical student(s), and ID pharmacist): ~13 weeks per year
• Transplant Service (with attending, ID pharmacist): 6 weeks per year with option for more
• VA Service (with attending, ID pharmacist): 6 weeks per year

Other rotations:

• Microbiology (4 weeks per year)
• Antimicrobial stewardship (4 weeks first year)
• Hospital epidemiology and infection control (4 weeks second year)
• Outpatient / Tele-ID (2 weeks each year)
• Research (13 weeks each year)
• Continuity clinic (half-day Thursday or Friday morning every week)
• VA clinic (half-day Wednesday mornings while on VA consults and Research)

Call for ID fellows consists of being available to answer pages after hours (5 p.m. to 8 a.m.). This is taken from home and only under extenuating circumstances do fellows need to physically return to the hospital. Coverage for the week (Tuesday – Tuesday) is provided by the inpatient fellow during the week encompassing their weekend coverage. The attending on the non-teaching service covers the pager half the working day (either 8-12 pm or 1-5 pm).

Three. MUSC Main Hospital, MUSC Ashley River Tower (ART), and the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center. There are rarely consults at the Institute of Psychiatry (an inpatient psychiatry ward) covered by the B service. All are located within a 0.5 mile radius or less.

• Campus Map (PDF)
• Map of Medical District, Downtown Charleston

Inpatient days vary based on patient load. Usual fellow hours are 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., but this also depends on workload. Fellows will attend whatever clinic/conference is scheduled and then proceed with rounds. Fellows pre-round as able prior to bedside rounds with attendings. Teams often table-round on follow ups around 10 am, then bedside-round on new consults around 2 pm, though this is attending dependent. Teams will see new consults as they are called and generally stop seeing new consults after 3 p.m. unless more urgent.

The Teaching Service is usually between 10-20 patients, some of which are covered by medicine residents. The Transplant Service averages around 8-15 patients, and the VA services averages 6-12 patients.

Fellows are scheduled for around six patients per clinic half-day. Clinic visits are 30 minutes for follow-ups and one hour for new visits (a new visit can be overbooked if needed with a follow-up).

Yes. Fellows will generally have medical students/residents and sometimes pharmacy residents on service to teach. This is usually in an informal setting.

Fellows attend a weekly Core Curriculum lecture on Tuesday mornings, as well as HIV Curriculum lecture on selected Wednesdays, ID Grand Rounds on Thursdays (12:30-1:30 p.m.), and Case of the Week on Fridays (8:15-9:00 a.m.). Fellows generally present Journal Club twice yearly and COW bi-monthly while on inpatient service. Fellows attend Microbiology Rounds Monday-Friday (11 a.m. - 12: p.m.) while on the Microbiology and Antimicrobial Stewardship Rotations; otherwise this is optional. Finally, fellows are encouraged to attend Department of Medicine Grand Rounds on Thursdays from 8-9 a.m.

When you start your fellowship, you will be assigned a research mentor to help you identify a project, either with that mentor or with another faculty member. There are numerous research opportunities available and attendings with a wide array of ongoing interests and projects to serve as mentors. Prior to your interview, you will be provided with more information about research opportunities with individual faculty members. Fellows have about 13 weeks of research available first and second year.

In addition to our fellowship coordinator who organizes much of the behind-the-scenes operations, fellows have scheduling staff for clinics, RNs/CNAs/MAs in clinic, a close relationship with ID and HIV pharmacists, and for HIV patients, social workers, case managers, and outreach support.

Fellows are regularly evaluated by attendings following rotations, as well as by their co-fellows. They meet bi-annually in person with their program director to review their evaluations and overall progress. Fellows submit evaluations of their peers, rotations and attendings regularly as well.

Traditionally, fellows have attended the George Washington ID Board Review Course during the first half of their second year. The cost is covered by the fellowship program.

The majority of fellows (~70%) stay within academic infectious diseases, either in general ID or transplant ID, with the remainder going into private practice. They practice all over the US (recent graduates have gone to Montana, Missouri, Louisiana), with the majority remaining in the southeast United States.

Yes. Fellows with appropriate licensing are eligible to moonlight in so far as it does not violate duty hours or fellowship obligations.