Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program

The field of Pediatric Infectious Diseases encompasses a broad array of disorders in infants, children and adolescents. Led by Dr. Ann Petru and Dr. Brian Lee, the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland has made major contributions to the health and well-being of children living in Northern California.

The Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland aims to train pediatricians in the prevention, diagnosis, and management of infectious diseases while providing comprehensive, compassionate, and competent care.

Program Goals

• Provide the experience necessary to diagnose and manage pediatric patients with a wide variety of acute and chronic infectious diseases, including disorders of host defense.
  
  
• Optimize the fellow’s ability to understand and apply the principles of disease control, prevention of nosocomial infections, hospital outbreak control, emerging pathogens, immunization programs, and/or vaccine-preventable diseases.
  
  
• Provide a framework and understanding of basic epidemiologic and biostatistical methods and their application to clinical research and patient care.
  
  
• Develop expertise in the functions and appropriate utilization of diagnostic microbiology, immunology, virology, mycology, and parasitology laboratories.
  
  
• Develop the ability to conduct research in the broad area of pediatric infectious diseases. Enhance teaching skills that can be used in the area of pediatric infectious diseases.

Fellowship Goals

In addition to the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program goals, all the hospital fellowship programs strive to:

• Provide the clinical experiences and educational opportunities necessary to build a solid foundation of medical knowledge, critical thinking abilities, literature review, diagnostic acumen and technical skills.
  
  
• Provide academic pediatricians the research training and experience to develop careers as physician-scientists.
  
  
• Develop well-rounded, empathetic clinicians with the skills to successfully communicate and give counsel to patients and families.
  
  
• Impart to our fellows the skills necessary to become lifelong learners, teachers and leaders who can work effectively with team members.
  
  
• Teach professionalism by mentorship, validating the critical roles of personal ethics, responsibility, respect, compassion, communication and self-awareness.
  

Program Highlights

Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland provides a unique blend of expert, specialized care in pediatrics for the region and primary care to a needy community. The size of the hospital and training programs affords tremendous opportunity for exposure to a myriad of disease states and education, yet doesn’t compromise the personal relationships between staff members and patients and their doctors.

The Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship is one of 5 fellowship programs based at Children’s Hospital. The others include Hematology-Oncology, Pulmonology, Emergency Medicine, and Pediatric Intensive Care. The size of our program allows fellows to develop close team dynamics, leadership skills and interaction with supervisors. The tremendous diversity in our community offers a breadth of infectious diseases that affords fellows many opportunities to attain a broad educational experience and to be able to focus on areas of interest in clinical care and medical research.

The Infectious Diseases Division sees over 500 new consults in the hospital and over 2000 inpatient consult follow-ups per year. We see over 200 new outpatient consults and over 1000 follow-up outpatient consults per year. We care for about 70 active HIV-infected children with over 500 clinic follow-up visits annually in our Pediatric HIV/AIDS clinic. In addition, our Pediatric Tuberculosis Clinic at CHRCO and our Pediatric Chest Clinics at Alameda and Contra Costa Counties evaluate and manage over 500 children annually with tuberculosis infection or disease.

Attending physicians in the Infectious Diseases Division provide coverage of infectious disease issues for the hospital 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. The ID attendings and fellows supervise the activities of the pediatric residents from the hospital’s own training program, as well as the activities of rotating residents and some medical students from other programs.


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