Hematology/Oncology Fellowship
Education and research | Fellowship training
Contact information | Application
Choice of Hematology/Oncology as a career
Have you ever considered a career in hematology/oncology?
It is a specialty that is dynamic, fascinating and fulfilling. It challenges all of the skills you learn as an internist. Often the first reaction to the idea is "everybody dies!" and "it's too depressing!" But the practice of hematology/oncology has much more to offer.
The field is dynamic: new medications and treatment modalities are being developed, diagnostic procedures are helping us make better treatment decisions, and no two patients are ever alike!
Hematology/oncology will stimulate the scientist in you, but it also demands compassion and willingness to work with patients and families as they face difficult dilemmas. As you know, it is always done as a "team" approach, and one of the greatest things is that the team is almost always composed of caring and helpful people!
Most of you have more experience with what goes on in the hospital, on the cancer ward, usually with the sickest patients with the worst prognoses. Life in outpatient oncology is often much brighter! We even see patients who have never set foot on the inpatient floor and are in long-term remissions! It is interesting and fulfilling, and despite some depressing days, you almost always go home with the feeling that you have really made an impact on someone’s life. And that of their family. It is much more than just dispensing chemotherapy, it is educating, supporting and comforting people at unique times in their lives. Finally, you have a chance to contribute, through clinical and bench research, to the lives of cancer patients in the future.
Our hematology/oncology fellowship program at MCV Campus is looking for physicians who want to develop a specialized fund of knowledge as well as care compassionately for these extraordinary patients.
The program offers a collegial and supportive setting in which fellows can learn the science as well as develop their skills in the clinical setting. There are also plenty of opportunities for mentored clinical and bench research in many different areas.
Stop and consider for a moment how you can make a difference as a physician. Maybe hematology/oncology is for you.
Education and research
The goal of the Hematology/Oncology Fellowship Program is to train outstanding specialists in the fields of Hematology and Oncology, who at the end of three years training will demonstrate expertise in both fields.
Expertise in these fields includes mastering the clinical practice of benign hematology, hematologic and solid tumor malignancies, palliative care and bone marrow transplantation. It also includes knowledge and understanding of the basic science behind both the pathology and therapy of hematologic and oncologic diseases.
For a physician to be truly outstanding in his or her field, he or she also must demonstrate compassion and empathy, and one of the main goals of our program is to foster these virtues in our fellows.
We recognize and welcome diversity of interests and support each fellow's special interests and personal career goals, be they directed toward becoming a private practitioner, a clinical investigator, a bench researcher or an academic clinician.
Fellowship training
The Hematology/Oncology Fellowship is a three-year program. Fellows choosing to specialize in only oncology train for two years. Fellows are required to rotate through clinical rotations for at least 18 months in order to satisfy ABIM requirements for subspecialty boards.
Clinical rotations at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center and the McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center include:
- Bone Marrow/Stem Cell Transplantation: 2 inpatient months during the first year, and 1 outpatient month/year the second and third years.
- Transfusion Medicine
- Gynecologic Oncology
- Hematopathology, including learning bone marrow aspiration and biopsy technique as well as diagnostic interpretation of microscopic, immunologic, molecular and cytogenetic information.
- Hematology/Oncology Inpatient Consultation
- Hematology/Oncology Inpatient Unit, with focus on Hematologic Malignancies and Hematology/Oncology Emergencies
- Palliative Medicine, including clinical work on the Thomas Palliative Care Unit, Palliative Care Consultation and the weekly Pain and Symptom Management Clinic
- Multidisciplinary Clinics, in which the fellow spends each half day of the week in the Massey Cancer Center’s specialty clinics in Thoracic, Breast, Hematologic, and Gastrointestinal Malignancies, and the other half reading and researching the specific diseases.
Other rotations are disease- or attending-specific, for example, a fellow may choose to spend a month with an attending physician who sees mostly patients with coagulation disorders or malignancies of the gastrointestinal or genitourinary tract.
Each fellow participates in two outpatient clinics per week, one at the McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center and one at the VCU Medical Center in the Dalton Oncology Clinic. The clinics are unique and exciting, in that the fellows manage their own patients, with faculty supervision, including evaluation and especially treatment planning. Both facilities are large referral centers, so the diversity of hematologic and oncologic problems that any fellow will manage in three years is immense. Additionally, each fellow has the satisfaction of caring for a large number of medically underserved patients, as the VCU Medical Center is responsible for caring for approximately 40 percent of the underserved population of Virginia.
In addition to these clinics and rotations, each fellow may "declare" one or two special areas of interest and many of his or her elective months are devoted to pursuing these areas of interest. For example, our current fellows have interests in clinical research of lung and breast cancer, hematologic malignancies, supportive care, and cancer education.
Each of these fellows has chosen one or two faculty mentors to assist in development of such interests, including designing and implementing a research project. Each fellow is required to design and complete a research project during their fellowship. Research projects are diverse, currently including:
- The effect of inhibition of IGF-1 signaling on the growth and response to chemotherapy of lung cancer
- Reasons for lack of compliance with oncology clinic appointments
- Review of hormonal therapies for premenopausal women with breast cancer
- Phase II clinical trial for non-small cell lung cancer
- How patients with metastatic cancer make decisions about therapy
- Review of methadone for chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain
- Whether how chemotherapy is prescribed differs for minority patients
Education, including curriculum development and didactic teaching is a key component of the fellowship program. Multiple didactic conferences occur each week, and fellows are active participants in all of them:
- Fellows seminar (presented by a fellow on any hematology/oncology topic, every other week)
- Weekly fellows didactic conference, presented by faculty.
- Weekly Hematopathology conference, during which all the week’s bone marrows are reviewed by the Hematopathologists.
- Weekly Hematology/Oncology Grand Rounds
- Leukemia/lymphoma conference (every other week during Grand Rounds)
- Biweekly VCU Medical Center Tumor Board
- Weekly Veterans Affairs Medical Center Tumor Board
- Weekly VCU Internal Medicine Grand Rounds
- Weekly Veterans Affairs Medical Center Grand Rounds
Resident Life is an important aspect of fellowship training. We try to assist the fellows in balancing time between training and family and recreational time. There is tremendous esprit de corps among the fellows.
We are proud of our fellows' personal and professional achievements, and take every opportunity to celebrate them.
The essence of caring for patients with cancer and life threatening hematologic illnesses is in competence and compassion.
Both are fostered in this program, by faculty and nursing and administrative staff. Fellows are nurtured and encouraged to share
their triumphs and challenges.
Fellowship contact information
Program director
Laurel J. Lyckholm, M.D.
P.O. Box 980230
Richmond, Virginia 23298-0230
Phone: (804) 828-9723
E-mail: lyckholm@vcu.edu
Application
All applications will be through ERAS and follow ERAS deadlines. Interviews will take place between January 1 and April 30.
VCU participates in the NRMP.
Massey Cancer Center Website