Overview
The education at UWMC provides comprehensive experience across the entire spectrum of transplant nephrology practice including inpatient and outpatient care for all types of solid organ transplant recipients, education, and patient-centered research. Faculty members serve as mentors and role models in clinical care, education, professionalism, and research.
Fellows are evaluated and receive feedback on these qualities at regular intervals over the year with the goals of improving the fellowship training experience and directly supporting their ongoing professional development.
Training Goals
Our program consists of a well-rounded, multidisciplinary partnership with transplant surgeons, pharmacists, nurse coordinators, dieticians, social workers, and other team members.
The clinical experience includes at least 6 months of inpatient-oriented work with attention to the pre-and post-operative management of kidney and pancreas transplant recipients. The transplant fellow is an integral team member and is directly involved in all aspects of daily inpatient teaching rounds with surgery and pharmacy, plus consultation of liver, lung, and heart transplant recipients, performance and interpretation of kidney transplant biopsies, and ambulatory management of recipients in immediate and long-term post-transplant clinics.
Continuity of inpatient to outpatient care for newly transplanted and re-hospitalized patients is intentional to improve the fellows’ relationship with patients and further their knowledge and experience across the disease spectrum.
The remaining months of the year include time to participate and learn:
- Evaluation of living donors and organ recipient candidates, commonly including multi-organ transplant candidates.
- Attending at least the required number of donor and recipient surgical procedures to achieve an in-depth understanding of the surgical issues involved in kidney and pancreas transplantation and to fulfill UNOS certification requirements.
- Elective rotations, including HLA laboratory, ultrasound, renal pathology, Kidney-Liver consult service, Kidney-Heart consult service
- A mentored clinical research project with the expectation and support to submit and present an abstract at a national conference and publish a related manuscript. This experience is also intended to enable the fellow to establish expertise and a professional niche for future work in the field.