Clinical Neurophysiology / Epilepsy Fellowship Program
The Division of Epilepsy and Clinical Neurophysiology of the Department of Neurology at Boston Children's Hospital offers a one-year fellowship program in Clinical Neurophysiology/Epilepsy. The fellowship program trains academically oriented physicians to become comprehensively trained pediatric clinical neurophysiologists and epileptologists who are familiar with the state-of-the-art diagnostic and therapeutic methods in the field.
Those who enter our fellowship have typically completed their training in child neurology. Our clinical neurophysiology training program is ACGME accredited. By the end of their year of training, fellows are eligible to take the Clinical Neurophysiology subspecialty boards of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, if they have previously completed an accredited residency program in Neurology. Currently, three positions are offered every year. The position is for one year. On an individual basis, a fellow may occasionally be offered a second year of research, depending on availability of funding.
Content of the fellowship
The fellowship is divided into periods of two weeks each, with the three different rotations repeated in six-week cycles throughout the year:
-
EEG interpretation: Two weeks of reading all outpatient, inpatient and ambulatory EEGs (excluding inpatient long-term monitoring studies). These studies are read first by the fellow, then they are all reviewed and interpreted the same day with an attending neurophysiologist. We perform about 5,000 such studies per year and each fellow therefore reads more than 1,500 such studies during the year.
-
Inpatient Epilepsy Service: Two weeks are spent on the inpatient Epilepsy service and Epilepsy Monitoring Unit. During these two week blocks, the fellows are involved in the clinical care of various epilepsy patients admitted for various reasons, including long-term video EEG monitoring for characterization of clinical seizure episodes, both noninvasive and invasive pre-surgical evaluations, and admissions for seizure exacerbations or initiation of the ketogenic diet. During this rotation, the fellows interpret all inpatient long-term monitoring studies with an attending epileptologist. They also go to the operating room for intraoperative electrocorticography, placement of intracranial electrodes, or for resective epilepsy surgeries, and assist in extraoperative functional brain mapping. The fellows see with the attending epilepsy service patients in consultation on other inpatient units or in the emergency department.
-
Elective Rotation: two weeks are spent as elective time or rotating through other neurophysiology subspecialties as required for board eligibility, such as EMG, sleep and autonomic testing. This time has also been used by some fellows to complete clinical research projects.
The fellows are given the latitude to establish their rotation schedule for the entire year, and they cross cover for each other in case of personal emergencies.
Weekly teaching conferences throughout the year include the multidisciplinary Epilepsy Surgery Conference (at which the fellows get to present the cases), a comprehensive series of weekly lectures on all aspects of clinical epilepsy, and a comprehensive series of weekly lectures on all aspects of clinical neurophysiology.
Application Information
Interested individuals should contact:
Blaise F. D. Bourgeois, M.D.
Director, Division of Epilepsy & Clinical Neurophysiology
Boston Children's Hospital
300 Longwood Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
Phone: (617) 355-2413 FAX: (617) 730-0463
E-mail: blaise.bourgeois@childrens.harvard.edu
A C.V. should be provided, as well as indication of the year for which the individual would like to be considered.. Appropriate candidates will be asked to provide three letters of recommendation and to come to Boston for a set of interviews. Positions are often filled 18 months in advance, but a position may occasionally be available on shorter notice.
Boston Children's Hospital is the primary pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School
If you assess or care for athletes with concussion or spinal injuries, join us for this multidisciplinary conference and hear the best practices of the field’s foremost experts. Afternoon breakout sessions will explore concussion management in depth.
