Clinical rotations

During the Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship, you engage in supervised clinical training in three areas at Mayo Clinic with increasing entrustment to lead the NICU team:

Rotation schedule

In total, there are 22 research blocks and 14 clinical blocks during the Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship. Fellows have four weeks of vacation each year. A sample schedule is included below.

Call frequency

• SMH NICU: As an on-service fellow, you are responsible for just one night of call a week — Tuesday.
• Research, L&D, and PCCE: The fellows assigned to research rotations are responsible for just one night of call a week — Sunday or Thursday, alternating week to week.

Fellow responsibilities

As a neonatal-perinatal fellow, you will have the following responsibilities:

• Review rotation- and level-specific goals and objectives for each rotation. These are available from MedHub, which you access via the Mayo Clinic intranet.
• Present twice a year at the Neonatal Clinical Consensus Conference. As a fellow, you identify a controversial patient management topic and lead discussion regarding evidence-based approaches to clinical problem-solving.
• Present on an annual basis at the Neonatal Morbidity and Mortality Conference. You participate in discussion regarding patient outcomes and system improvements.
• Select a research and neonatology mentor.
• Meet with a research mentor biweekly during research rotations and meet with the neonatology mentor quarterly.
• Develop curriculum to be taught at the Multidisciplinary Simulation Center.
• Present your research at the Neonatal Fellow Research Symposium.
• Present emerging evidence in the basic science and practice of neonatal medicine at journal club on an every-other-month basis.
• Give specific feedback regarding the structure of the fellowship training program at the Neonatal Program Review once a year.
• Identify members to participate in the scholarship oversight committee. You will schedule meetings with members of the committee and record minutes of the meeting.
• Develop an individualized learning plan with guidance provided by the fellowship director and your mentor.
  • Semiannually, you are asked to complete a self-reflection tool, which guides you in evaluating your learning goals and actions required to meet those goals. The reflection tool is reviewed by the program director during your semiannual reviews. The reflection tool is part of your online portfolio and can be reviewed at any time.
• Participate in a quality improvement project with the Quality and Safety Committee or Family-Centered Care Committee.

Fellow conferences

Our core learning experiences occur on Thursday afternoons and rotate systematically throughout fellowship. Active learning is promoted in conferences that facilitate discussion rather than in traditional didactic formats.  Our conferences include regularly scheduled conferences such as:

• Core neonatal medicine curriculum
• Landmark series in neonatology
• Article of the month series
• Neonatal board review workshops
• Equity in neonatology curriculum
• Longitudinal procedural mastery curriculum
• Longitudinal advanced communication curriculum
• Longitutinal leadership curriculum
• NeoSurgery conference
• Fellow's choice series
• Senior fellow's research seminar

Recurring meetings blending clinical and educational needs, include:

• Morbidity & Mortality
• Fetal board
• NICU Mayomics (Genome) board

In addition, informal clinical conferences are held with medical students, pediatric interns, and residents serving clerkships in neonatology. 

See details on conferences for fellows.