Infectious Diseases Clinical Service Curriculum

The ID curriculum and educational experience at Harbor-UCLA provides fellows with many unique opportunities.  Similar to other ID fellowships, fellows will leave our program very comfortable consulting on all ID “bread and butter” presentations such as: neutropenic fever, fever in the ICU, orthopedic hardware infections, myriad of Staph aureus related complications, and nosocomial infections.

The unique aspect at Harbor-UCLA for exposure to a broad range of infectious diseases is threefold: 

Los Angeles County is expansive.  Although it is well known as an urban center, there is a significantly large, rural geographic population to the County that exposes our fellows to zoonoses and many rickettsial illnesses that may not often be seen in many other strictly urban training centers. 

Los Angeles County has remarkable diversity of people that also leads to a wide variety of epidemiologic exposures and risk factors for infectious diseases (i.e., food, animal, job exposures, or alternative/complimentary medication use).  Many patients seen at Harbor-UCLA are born outside of the US or have travel to locations outside the US exposing our fellows to the variety of infectious disease syndromes based off geographic endemicity.   

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Harbor-UCLA is one of four safety-net hospitals within Los Angeles County. Being disproportionately impacted by disparities in health, our fellows are exposed to late manifestations of infectious syndromes and associated complications.  Additionally, the County has specialized Harbor-UCLA to be the primary center to receive care for certain conditions.  For example, patients admitted to other DHS hospitals that require neurosurgical or cardiovascular-thoracic surgical care may transfer to Harbor-UCLA. For our ID fellows, this increases the bedside learning opportunities of CNS infectious disease syndromes (i.e., device related infections, neurocysticercosis, ect) as well as endocarditis or thoracic cavity infections. Additionally, all renal transplant recipients receiving care through DHS are funneled to Harbor-UCLA.  As a Level 1 Trauma Center with a robust surgical intensive care unit, fellows at Harbor-UCLA will consult on many common infectious complications seen in the SICU.  

ID CONSULT SERVICE:

Fellows rotate roughly 25% of their fellowship on the ID Inpatient Consult Service.  The team consists of the attending on service, the ID Consult fellow, typically 1-2 internal medicine or family medicine residents, UCLA medical students, and a rounding Infectious Disease pharmacist with pharmacy students. The Stewardship/Bridge Fellow will assist on the consultative rotation as needed during higher census periods.  The Stewardship Fellow covers the antibiotic pager during the day with support from a dedicated Stewardship Attending

Patients discharged with ID related illnesses are followed in the ID outpatient clinic (½ day per week or followed for their OPAT). The Stewardship Fellow and the Research Fellow attend the weekly ID clinic.  Common ID cases seen in the clinic include:

Aspergillosis related illnesses

Coccidioidomycosis

Non-AIDS Cryptococcal infection

Non-pulmonary Tuberculosis

Neurocysticercosis

Non-TB mycobacteria

Osteomyelitis

Prosthetic joint infections – Collaborative clinic with ID-Ortho every 2 months

The faculty of the ID Division are well known as clinicians and researchers.  All are dedicated to patient care and rotate on services over half of the year prioritizing teaching and mentorship to fellows and residents.  Their involvement in research spans from the bench (ex. Staphylococcus aureus pathogenicity, candida virulence factors and vaccine development, invasive fungal infections, & many more) with a translational approach to bedside to large phase III clinical trials on microbiologic therapies for inpatients and outpatients. 

Many of the faculty are involved in guideline writing committees for the Infectious Diseases Society of America including topics such as Infective Endocarditis, Staphylococcus aureusCandidal infections, Urinary tract infections. An obvious benefit to the fellow is that they are being taught at the bedside by experts in their field that can provide not only the most up-to-date information on a topic but an understanding to the nuances of current recommendations.  

Meet our Faculty

Meet our Fellows

Fellows that completed their training at Harbor-UCLA leave with very strong clinical acumen for a vast array of ID related jobs.  Historically, fellows have done extremely well with the ID board exams and are very competitive when searching for jobs. 

Meet our Fellows