Infectious Disease Greenville - Fellows

Medical Education: University of Kentucky College of Medicine

Residency: Med-Peds, Prisma Health University of South Carolina School Of Medicine, Greenville, South Carolina

My experience as a fellow:  Being in a small fellowship program is a unique experience.  For me it has meant being well-known and intentionally mentored by many of my attendings. It has meant that there has been room for individualization in my fellowship experience. Following fellowship, I plan to pursue a career in global health. During my second year of fellowship I will travel to complete a Tropical Medicine certification course in Lima, Peru. I felt this experience was important in order to round out my training before practicing abroad. I have appreciated not only that my program has been open to requests to individualize my educational experience, but that I have been encouraged to consider how to structure my fellowship experience to best meet my needs as a learner. Our fellows rotate through a three-month cycle of inpatient, outpatient, and research/elective experiences. This cycling between more intensive and less structured months allows for more life outside of training than I felt was possible during my residency training. During inpatient months the fellow is a part of a teaching team with other learners, including residents, medical students, and pharmacy students. The inpatient teaching team has a cap that allows for all of these learners to focus on getting to know our patients and their infectious conditions rather than being overwhelmed by a sheer volume of patients. In this way and many others our fellows are allowed a protected space to teach and learn. In the same way our monthly rotations cycle through different settings our outpatient months are also more diverse than my outpatient months of residency training. Each week in an outpatient block I spend time in continuity clinic, a Wound Care clinic, a Travel Medicine clinic providing guidance to upcoming travelers, an HIV clinic, and providing Telemedicine consultations. I appreciate the variety of these weeks and feel it has made my outpatient experience much richer during fellowship.

My experience in fellowship cannot be discussed without mentioning how much richer it has been for being located in Greenville. I moved to Greenville from Kentucky for residency and quickly fell in love with the area. The city is very much alive and is a life-giving place to be. As someone who loves spending time outdoors I am very thankful for a beautiful, paved walking/biking path that runs through the city (the Swamp Rabbit Trail) as well as many hiking trails and lakes nearby. The city is full of other young families and our family has found it easy to build deep community that has carried us through my training here. Our family now considers Greenville to be our home and I would encourage anyone considering this program to take a trip to the city and see how wonderful it is for themselves. 

My career goals are:  After completing fellowship I plan to partner with an organization that serves to mobilize medical providers and live and work abroad for most of my career. There is not a specific location where I plan to practice, but am open to working many different places. I completed an Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency program and took both my Internal Medicine and Pediatrics boards this year. I hope to have both adult and pediatric patients in my future practice. While I would be delighted to practice only Infectious Disease in the future, I am also open to practicing more general internal medicine. Our Infectious Disease attendings here also attend on the general inpatient Medical Teaching Service with the residents and medical students and remain up to date in their general internal medicine knowledge. I appreciate even within my subspeciality training being surrounded by individuals that continue to serve and think as internists.

Medical School:  Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, Bradenton, Florida

Residency:  Internal Medicine, Prisma Health University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Greenville, South Carolina

My experience as a fellow:  Over the past two years of my infectious disease fellowship, I've been fortunate to have an overwhelmingly positive experience. Learning from extraordinary attending physicians who are not only highly knowledgeable but also kind, compassionate, and uniquely diverse in their training backgrounds has been invaluable. Each physician I have worked with is dedicated to teaching, utilizing every patient case as a learning opportunity. This fellowship stands out in that attendings function autonomously, without reliance on fellows for work responsibilities. This dynamic allows for a more personalized and impactful learning experience where fellows feel recognized and supported. The demanding inpatient service is exciting and stimulating with exposure to a diverse range of patients and diseases. Meanwhile, outpatient rotations maintain the diversity with dedicated clinic time to the HIV population, travel clinic consultations, and telemedicine. Furthermore, there is dedicated time for clinical research, which, coupled with a lighter schedule, promotes a healthy work-life balance. While the fellowship program is relatively new, its commitment to fellow success is evident. Dr. Shirley, our program director, is approachable, accommodating, and genuinely values fellows' feedback, actively working towards improvement.

My Career goals are:  I am excited about the opportunity to transition into the role of attending physician within this program.