Pain Management Fellowship at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside

The Department of Anesthesiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside offers a Pain Management Fellowship. The 12-month training program is certified by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) program in pain medicine. The start date is August 1. We accept four fellows annually.

Our program consists of core faculty and rotations in the Departments of Neurology, Physiatry, Psychiatry, and Palliative Care to provide a multidisciplinary experience. Fellows who complete the training program and are board certified in their primary specialty are eligible to take the American Board of Anesthesiology (ABA) Pain Medicine Certification Examination.

We invite you to reach out to us with any questions.

Program Overview

As a pain management fellow within the Department of Anesthesiology, you learn interventional, multimodal, and multidisciplinary approaches to managing a wide variety of acute and chronic pain conditions. The fellowship is offered at a busy pain management practice on the West Side of Manhattan. We treat a wide variety of relatively common painful pathologies like radiculopathies and arthropathies to rare conditions such as craniofacial neuralgias and complex regional pain syndrome.

You receive extensive training in the following outpatient procedures: epidural steroid injections (interlaminar, transforaminal, caudal), medial branch blocks, radiofrequency ablations, joint injections (sacroiliac, hip, knee, shoulder, and hand), trigger point injections, peripheral nerve blocks, craniofacial nerve blocks (trigeminal, occipital, and sphenopalatine), stellate ganglion blocks, lumbar sympathetic blocks, superior hypogastric plexus blocks, ganglion impar blocks, and trials/implantations of spinal cord stimulators, dorsal root ganglion stimulators, and intrathecal pumps.

Clinical training occurs at the wellness and pain management outpatient office on 57th street and at Mount Sinai West & Mount Sinai Morningside and Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn.

How to Apply

The Pain Management Fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside participates in the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) Electronic Residency Application Service Pain Medicine Match, following the guidelines of the NRMP for final selection of four trainee positions. You can learn more about the matching process at the NRMP web site.

We offer guaranteed subsidized housing across the street from Mount Sinai West, within walking distance of Lincoln Center, Columbus Circle, and Central Park.

Schedule

Fellows participate in weekly rotations consisting of consult, procedures, office, and float.

The consult rotation provides the medical knowledge and skills you need to diagnose and treat patients with acute and chronic pain in the inpatient setting. There is a focus on perioperative acute catheter management for various orthopedic surgeries at Mount Sinai West. You also have the opportunity to serve as a supervisor/mentor for the interns and other rotating trainees on the inpatient team. Under the attending’s supervision, you learn delegation and triage skills and gain confidence in your ability to handle patient questions and consults.

The procedure rotation is designed to develop your proficiency in performing interventional pain procedures and to educate you about important pre- and post-procedure care. You learn how to perform pre-procedural assessment, including obtaining proper consent, evaluating radiological images, and reviewing the technique involved. You also study the pharmacology of agents used during procedures as well as what equipment is needed for any procedure. Finally, by completing a post procedure follow-up assessment you gain an understanding of the effect that procedures have on patients.

The office rotation allows fellows to develop skills in patient assessment including comprehensive history and physical evaluation and management of common outpatient pain complaints. You improve your presentation skills and understand proper chart completion. This teaches you the importance of proper documentation to obtain authorizations for a proposed treatment plan. You learn proper assessment and monitoring in opioid prescribing and medical cannabis certification.

The float rotation at Mount Sinai Morningside further develops your interventional and office skills. We train you to work with the very diverse patient population we have at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital clinics. We address the prevalence of important co-morbidities such as substance use and psychiatric disorders. You also rotate through subspecialties including: palliative care, psychiatry, physiatry, and neurology/headache. Fellows complete a research project of their choice and learn how to develop a clinical question into a research project.

Curriculum

Our fellowship offers a robust didactic program, manikin & ultrasound simulation, multidisciplinary rotations, and dedicated non-clinical time to allow you to concentrate on research. Our didactic program is designed to prepare you for the ABA Pain Medicine Board Certification Exam.

The below is a sample schedule:

Journal Club: Once per month there is journal club. We distribute an article of interest and each fellow is responsible for critically reviewing the article and presenting an assessment.

2023-2024 Fellows

Joshua Dumbroff, MD
Gabriel Irizarry-Berrios, MD
Marckenley Isaac, MD
Lauren Mathew, MD

2022-2023 Fellows

Anthony Apigo, MD
Alec Cartagena, DO
Ishu Kant, MD
Jonathan Varghese, MD

2021-2022 Fellows

Darryl Brown, MD
Robert Chojnowski, MD
Danish Zaidi, MD
Xiao Zheng, MD

2020-2021 Fellows

Nishan Bingham, MD
Joseph Kim, MD
Thomas Ng, MD
Jessica Zhang, MD