Research is an integral part of the Pediatric Cardiology Fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Fellows are exposed to ongoing clinical and basic research in the Division and in the Department of Pediatrics through pediatric cardiology research conferences held every other month, and the monthly Children's Health Research Center conferences. The latter are part of a broad NIH-sponsored center grant to foster research in pediatrics and its subspecialties.
All pediatric cardiology fellows must complete a two-month research rotation during their first year. During this period, fellows identify an area of interest from potential projects defined by the faculty or by developing a novel project. Fellows arrange a research mentorship with the appropriate sponsoring faculty. During their second and third years, fellows devote 10 months to research in blocks of at least two, preferably three, months.
Fellows meet regularly with their research mentors, with regular evaluation by an assigned scholarly evaluation committee. Fellows present their research idea with complete background review and statistical design to the scholarly oversight committee (SOC) by the end of their first year. Thereafter, each fellow’s progress is monitored biannually by the SOC. By the mid-portion of their third year, fellows are expected to submit at least one abstract of their work to an appropriate regional or national scientific meeting. The manuscript describing the research is expected to be completed no later than two months after submitting the abstract. Fellows are also mandated to take a scholarly activity and research course that incorporates didactics and lectures covering research methodology, grant, abstract and manuscript writing and also goes over adult learning theory and bioethics.