Fellowship Program

The major goal of the Yale Hematology Fellowship Training program is to provide clinical and research training in order to prepare trainees for careers as physician-scientists in academic medicine. The ACGME-approved program in Hematology is for two years, but trainees are encouraged to stay for at least a third year to pursue and consolidate their research experience. A combined program to satisfy the training requirements for ABIM subspecialty certification in both Hematology and Oncology is also available. The first year of the program is mainly clinical with the fellows spending the bulk of their time seeing patients in a consultative or "primary physician" capacity, under the supervision of an attending physician in Hematology or Oncology. On the average, two to three new consultation requests per day are received and because Yale-New Haven Hospital is a tertiary referral center as well as a city hospital, there is the opportunity to see many patients with the more unusual as well as the more common hematological disorders. In addition, there is an active outpatient hematology clinic at which new referral patients as well as established patients requiring longitudinal follow-up are seen. Ample opportunity and instruction are provided in the performance and interpretation of bone marrow aspirates and biopsies, and in pheresis procedures. There is a weekly clinical intake conference, which is devoted to discussion of outpatients and inpatients. The more difficult diagnostic and therapeutic problems are emphasized. Other teaching activities include a journal club, as well as more formal clinical teaching and research conferences to which speakers from other institutions are often invited. Fellows participate in the planning organization, and presentation of these conferences.

The Oncology Section at Yale is administratively separate from the Hematology Section, and has its own independent fellowship training program. Interested applicants should submit separate applications to the Oncology Section (c/o Jill Lacy, M.D.) in order to be considered independently for acceptance in the Oncology program. Both Sections participate in the care of patients with acute leukemia and other hematologic malignancies such as lymphomas and multiple myeloma. The fellowship programs of both Sections are configured to allow cross-over rotations and the opportunity, in a three-year program, to quality for taking the ABIM subspecialty examinations in both Hematology and Oncology.

The program also offers a number of rotations in other related disciplines: Transfusion Medicine and Blood Banking, Laboratory Medicine including flow cytometry and coagulation, and Pediatric Hematology. In addition, fellows rotate at the nearby West Haven Veterans Administration Hospital which has a combined Hematology-Oncology program. There is a Peripheral Blood Stem Cell and Bone Marrow Transplantation Service on which both Hematology and Oncology fellows rotate. This clinical care unit also functions as a center for clinical research.

A large number of research training opportunities are available to fellows. In addition to the individual research programs of primary faculty members of the Hematology Section, a large number of other research opportunities are available to fellows in the laboratories of faculty members in other Sections and Departments who carry out research relevant to Hematology, frequently in collaboration with Hematology Section faculty members. Specific examples of these research opportunities are provided in the research activities section of this website. Essentially, fellows have potential access for their research training to the whole range of ongoing research programs at Yale University School of Medicine.