Mission

Our mission is to train aspiring fellows to achieve competence in independent and collaborative clinical practice, education and research to forward the care of children with hematologic and oncologic disease. This includes understanding the newest treatments through clinical trials. The program teaches fellows to become physician scholars and practice in a competent, professional and compassionate manner. The program fosters critical and analytical thinking, the spirit of inquiry, self-assessment, lifelong learning strategies, effective communication with staff/families and procedural/technical skills.

Program Aims

Our program aims to train pediatric hematology/oncology fellows to:

• Provide excellent family-centered clinical care for patients with hematology/oncology disorders while considering the unique needs/challenges of each family. This includes a comprehensive understanding of the pathophysiology of pediatric hematologic and oncologic disorders, diagnosis and management of these disorders.
• Attend and participate in weekly didactic lectures
• Participate in psychosocial rounds to address difficult family, financial, or psychologic issues
• Present patient cases at multidisciplinary tumor board - a multidisciplinary conference to discuss new oncology patients’ disease, medical issues, treatment plans and psychosocial issues
• Collaborate with University of Florida Proton Therapy Institute to educate fellows regarding radiation treatment for oncologic disorders
• Promote understanding of the role of quality improvement and patient safety in the care of hematology/oncology patients
• Be capable of leading a QI project
• Nurture and develop clinical investigators and future researchers. This includes education in the fundamentals of clinical research and understanding clinical trials methodology.
• Lead a clinical research project as part of the fellow’s scholarly activity with an expectation of publication of research

Goals and Objectives

The University of Florida College of Medicine – Jacksonville provides a comprehensive program for training in pediatric hematology/oncology. The goal of the program is to prepare the future leaders in pediatric hematology/oncology. Upon successful completion of training, our fellows will have:

• Comprehensive understanding of the pathophysiology of pediatric hematologic and oncologic disorders
• Competency in the clinical diagnosis and management of pediatric hematologic and oncologic disorders including understanding the role of stem cell transplant in treatment
• Understanding of clinical trials methodology
• Competency in a selected research interest
• Training in ethics, administration and teaching

Our program seeks to nurture and develop clinical investigators and future researchers. During training, the fellows are expected to accomplish level-specific, rotation-specific goals and objectives based on the six general competencies identified by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, or ACGME. Under the expert supervision and guidance of the faculty, the trainee will assume graded responsibility as educational experience and procedural skills increase.