Launched in 2008, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Nationwide Children’s Hospital Allergy and Immunology Fellowship Program is completing its 16th year. In that time, the fellowship has trained two fellows per year, with a 100% board pass rate.
One of the unique aspects of the program, says Monica Kraft, MD, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and associate program director of the fellowship, “is that it’s housed in Ohio State, but is a combination of adult and pediatric allergy and immunology. Allergy is one of the unique subspecialties. Whether you have a primary background in internal medicine or pediatrics, the board covers a specialization with both.”
The two-year program is administered through The Ohio State University College of Medicine and is designed to meet guidelines created by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the American Board of Allergy and Immunology (ABAI). The fellowship program provides 12 months of clinical experience, split between the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center and Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH), including six months of research and additional educational and academic time. Some fellows choose a third year in which to conduct additional research.
Dr. Kraft says that with Rebecca Scherzer, MD, the fellowship program’s director, they “coordinate the fellow clinical experiences to rotate in continuity clinics at both NCH Allergy and Ohio State Allergy weekly, and alternate month-to-month consult coverage and electives.”
On Fridays, the didactic session offers opportunities for faculty from both institutions to meet and present important topics in allergy and immunology to the fellows. Dr. Kraft says, “I think having the fellowship program keeps our divisions feeling like one ‘team’ of faculty rather than two separate institutions.”
Because the Division of Allergy and Immunology at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center resides within the Department of Otolaryngology, there is typically more of a partnership with ear, nose and throat (ENT) compared to other programs that are usually associated with internal medicine, pulmonology or rheumatology. This allows fellows, says Dr. Kraft, “to get close-up experience” with ENT–specific conditions that significantly overlap with allergies, such as chronic sinusitis with nasal polyps, vocal cord dysfunction or immune deficiency. This gives fellows real-world experience with differential diagnoses for these types of indications.
The fellows also rotate through other areas depending on their future career paths. For example, fellows may spend more time in Allergy and Immunology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, or if they have an interest in oncology, they may rotate with Hematology, Oncology and Marrow Transplant. None of these are mandatory rotations, says Dr. Kraft, but they give fellows the ability to structure their electives around their professional interests.
“We’re not surgeons,” says Kraft. “We are medical doctors, but we specialize in allergic diseases and immune deficiencies. So, we train fellows to become competent clinicians, either in academics, private practice or industry. It’s created a nice partnership and potential for collaboration.”