The USF Interventional Cardiology Fellowship Training Program is a one-year program. We comply with all Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requirements, in addition to following the guidelines and recommendations of the American College of Cardiology’s (ACC) cardiovascular disease “COCATS” procedural requirements. 

Our Mission

The mission of our USF Interventional Cardiology Fellowship Training Program is to develop highly competent practitioners with a commitment to lifelong learning. We accomplish this through the creation of a scholarly environment and training in a wide range of procedures involving coronary interventions, complex and contemporary, with participation in peripheral vascular interventions, exposure to structural heart disease and therapies.

Our Aims

1. Prepare fellows with knowledge and clinical skills for excellence in the practice of interventional cardiology post training.
2. Expose fellows to a wide range of procedures involving coronary interventions, complex and contemporary, with participation in peripheral vascular interventions, and exposure to structural heart disease and therapies.
3. Educate fellows how to investigate and evaluate patients, to appraise and assimilate scientific evidence, and to continuously improve patient care based on constant self-evaluation and life-long learning with prioritizing professional responsibility and adherence to ethical principles.
4. Encourage fellows to participate in academic activities, but limited to basic science or clinical research, but to include administrative, leadership and quality initiatives, and provide both guidance and support to allow Fellows to continue these activities during their career.

The Interventional Cardiology fellowship training is designed to provide the fellow with COCATS Level III training. Specific curricular milestones for training in Coronary Angiography and Intervention and Peripheral Vascular Angiography and Intervention, as they relate to the Core Competencies promulgated by the ACGME, are adopted as outlined in the COCATS 4 Task Force 10 document. Additionally, specific curricular milestones for Ambulatory and Longitudinal Care, as well as Research, are also included.

In order to ensure the appropriate training of the Interventional Cardiology fellow the training program will ensure that a minimum of 400 interventional procedures are performed per year and that the Interventional fellow has the opportunity to acquire skill in the performance of a minimum of 250 coronary interventions.

The Interventional Fellowship will be comprised of 12 months, beginning each July and ending in June for each academic year. The 12 months will be divided into 2-month blocks, where fellows rotate between the North Campus and South Campus. The North Campus is comprised of the James A. Haley VA Hospital, which has inpatient and outpatient procedural volume, vascular interventional exposure as well as outpatient interventional clinic experience. The South Campus is comprised of Tampa General Hospital, which has inpatient and outpatient/elective procedural volume, emergency room and STEMI experiences, and structural heart disease exposure.

Didactic learning and educational conferences are shared between both campuses. There is a robust educational curriculum throughout the course of the year. There are both mandatory and elective conference opportunities for interventional fellows. Interventional fellows are required to participate in the conference at their rotation location (North or South) and, in some cases, lead the conferences which can be either topic based, or patient/case based. The conferences are attended by cath lab staff, attendings, and general fellows (especially those interested in interventional cardiology). Attendance to the mandatory conferences is taken and recorded.

The Educational Conference schedule continues throughout the entire year. The standard frame of the educational schedule is as follows (the conferences marked with an asterisk* are mandatory):

Electronic evaluation forms are used by the faculty as one of the ways to assess the fellows. These evaluations have been devised to assess the aspects of the ACGME’s Six Core Competencies: Patient Care, Medical Knowledge, Interpersonal and Communication Skills, Professionalism, Systems-Based Practice and Practice-Based Learning and Improvement. Fellows receive written and verbal feedback at the end of each rotation from the faculty preceptor and fellows are given the opportunity to review and ask questions.