The Heart Failure teaching program at Stony Brook Medicine is designed to provide outstanding practical and academic training to prepare residents and fellows for diverse and productive careers in Cardiology. For physicians in training, this includes attention to both clinical skills development and personal growth and within a framework of the highest professional values.
The curriculum includes the daily care of patients with cardiovascular disease under direct and indirect supervision of the attending physician, participation in multiple didactic clinical conferences, reading of the Heart Failure syllabus, routine and frequent access of the medical literature, participation in clinical research projects and an understanding of the application of basic science research and techniques to the practice of clinical cardiology.
Objectives
Skills to be developed include:
- History taking
- Physical examination (including the advanced cardiovascular exam)
- Establishing a hierarchal differential diagnoses
- Indications for tests and procedures
- Performing data interpretation
- Formulation and implementation of care plans
- Follow-up of therapeutic decisions to assess their efficacy
- Mechanisms for risk factor modification
- Teaching and ethical guidance
- Instruction in the professional manner
- Medical ethics involved in cardiovascular care, including end-of-life issues
- Establishing mechanisms for lifelong learning
- The practice of humanism in dealing with patients and their families
These goals are designed to run in concert with the overall goal of the HF program at SBUH which is to provide excellent, compassionate and state-of-the-art care to patients with heart failure and heart failure related disease.
Patients to be seen, across all demographics, include those with:
- Cardiomyopathies (hypertensive, ischemic, valvular, idiopathic, peripartum, toxin-induced, infiltrative and metabolic, etc)
- Right and left heart failure
- Acute or chronic myocarditis
- Diastolic disease
- Complex valvular and coronary anatomy
- Syncope and arrhythmias in the setting of heart failure
- Complex perioperative low output states
- Transplant or ventricular assist device evaluation
- Cardiogenic shock
Upon completion of the rotation, the fellow should be able to develop a strategy to evaluate, diagnose and manage patients with systolic or diastolic dysfunction. This includes the ability to:
- Assess diagnostic modalities for a high-quality and cost-effective management strategy
- Understand practice guidelines governing the heart failure patient
- Actuate therapeutic interventions for patients with congestive heart failure
- Be familiar with review advances in technology
- Identify reversible causes of heart failure
- Identify patients who may benefit for transplantation referral
- Explain etiologies of congestive heart failure
- Discuss the evolving treatment options in congestive heart failure.
- Describe the normal anatomy and physiology of the cardiovascular system
- Perform complete physical exams with particular attention to the cardiovascular system
- Describe the mechanism and usage of medications employed in treating heart failure