Neonatal/Perinatal Medicine Fellowship
Program Overview
The Neonatal-Perinatal Fellowship Training Program — offered jointly by Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware, Christiana Hospital and Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University (TJU) — provides a unique and comprehensive training experience that will lead to a career in academic or clinical neonatology.
The program, leveraging the diverse strengths of all 3 hospitals, provides a well-rounded experience in the clinical care of critically ill newborns and extensive training in the principles of clinical and basic science research.
- Curriculum
- Research & Training
- Salary & Benefits
- Location & Living
- Faculty & Participants
Our Fellowship Program
The fellowship program in Neonatal-Perinatal medicine offers the unique opportunity to provide clinical care at three distinct settings in the Delaware Valley. Your clinical experience will range from the largest delivery center in Delaware at Christiana Hospital, through a large inner-city delivery experience at Thomas Jefferson University to a referral children’s hospital NICU at Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware. The clinical program will provide training across the full breadth of neonatal care from the care of the periviable premature neonate to providing ECMO to the critically ill term newborn.
While experiencing high-level clinical training you will also be fully immersed in a vibrant academic environment, including weekly dedicated lecture time, multiple clinical conferences and a defined research and simulation curriculum. As your fellowship progresses and research becomes more prominent, you will be presented with an abundance of research opportunities ranging from bench basic science research, through clinical database design to qualitative research methodology.
Our fellowship program graduates clinically and academically excellent Neonatologists that we anticipate to become future clinical and academic leaders in the field.
Program Components
Unique Clinical Settings
You’ll do your rotations at all hospital facilities. Although the campuses are located within 45 minutes of each other, you’ll work at only one of these clinical sites on any given day:
- Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware, located in Wilmington, Del., is one of the top children’s hospitals in the United States providing high-level clinical care and cutting edge academic research. Part of your clinical experience will occur in the 14-bed Cardiac Intensive Care Unit where you will care for infants with congenital heart disease both before and after surgery. In the 32 bed referral NICU you will learn the care of the surgical infant, the infant requiring ECMO and those requiring multiple complex subspecialty referrals. Your experience will include the Advanced Delivery Program focusing on the care of the fetally diagnosed neonate requiring immediate access to post-delivery care.
- Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN) at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, located in Philadelphia and affiliated with Sidney Kimmel Medical College, is a 40-bed Level III NICU associated with a busy delivery room and a maternal fetal medicine department that serves as a referral service for high-risk pregnancies. The ICN is also a tertiary referral site for neonates requiring photocoagulation therapy for retinopathy of prematurity and therapeutic hypothermia for hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. Its urban setting exposes you to a highly diverse patient population with a particular focus on premature neonates born as early as 22 weeks gestation and opiate exposed neonates with neonatal abstinence syndrome as a part of the Maternal Addiction Treatment Education & Research (MATER) program.
- Christiana Hospital, located in Newark, Del., is the only general tertiary care facility in the state and is a high risk obstetrics referral center. With more than 7,000 annual deliveries, the hospital has an active maternal fetal medicine department that evaluates high-risk pregnancies and a 86-bed, single bed, Level III NICU. The NICU has an annual admission rate of 1,500 newborns and an average daily census of 55. Our training environment is enriched by the hospital’s advanced neonatal transport team which has served as a mobile NICU for more than 25 years. Our Tiny Baby collaborative group focuses on providing evidence based guidelines and quality improvement initiatives for infants born as low as 22 weeks gestation. The NICU collaborates with the pediatric subspecialists at Nemours, the NICU provides neonatal palliative care services through the IMPACT team which is comprised of a neonatologist who is board certified in hospice and palliative medicine, physicians and nurses from neonatology and obstetrics, advanced practice clinicians, social work and pastoral care. Our neonatology group is active in quality improvement, clinical research and trainee education.
Program Activities
With fellows from other programs, you’ll participate in a variety of didactic sessions, including basic research training and statistics, as well as pediatric grand rounds.
Other activities include:
- Daily teaching rounds during clinical rotations
- Orientation lectures on ventilator management, transport and ECMO
- Neonatal-perinatal, laboratory and radiology rounds
- Fellow physiologic lecture series (weekly lectures that cover the entire content of the subspecialty certifying examination)
- Classic and neonatal journal clubs
- Fellow board review
- Conferences and seminars on fellow research, quality improvement, professionalism/communication, case conferences, morbidity and mortality and fetal therapy
Master's Opportunity at Thomas Jefferson University
You may also pursue a Masters degree through Thomas Jefferson University, concurrently or following your fellowship training. They offer programs in:
- Human clinical investigation
- Public health
- Health care quality and safety
These fulfill the scholarly activity requirement of the American Board of Pediatrics.
Unique Features of Our Program
- Strong clinical training in three different types of NICU
- One of the bigger programs (total 12 fellows, planning to increase to 15)
- ECMO managed by the NICU team
- ECMO training and certification, ECMO simulation program
- Research opportunities (Basic/Translational/Clinical/QI projects)
- Robust research program (Strong representation at national meetings, manuscripts)
- Protected time for the didactics
- Research grant for the fellows
- Clinical mentors program
- Bedside ultrasound training
- Simulation training
- Research curriculum lecture series
- Fellows’ retreat
- Research mentors-first year fellows meeting
- Neonatal Critical Care Transport training
- Joint Neonatology Surgery conference
- Joint Neonatology Cardiology conference
- Joint Neonatology Neurology conference
- High risk deliveries at Nemours Children's Hospital, Delaware
- High risk babies follow up program
- Quality and safety curriculum
- Global health (clinical and research opportunity)
- Masters program
- Diversity
Apply Today
Currently Accepting Applications
Questions About Applying?
Zubair Aghai, MD
Program Director
zubair.aghai@nemours.org
Clara Greskoff
GME Program coordinator
clara.greskoff@nemours.org