Cardiovascular Fellowship

MetroHealth Cardiology Fellowship Overview from MetroHealth on Vimeo.

The Case Western Reserve Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship at The MetroHealth System is a fully ACGME accredited 3-year training program for 3 fellows at each year of training. The MetroHealth System has a main campus with 750 beds, two outlying inpatient facilities, and 27 satellites (8 with Cardiology services). The Heart and Vascular Center is a busy unit with 20 full time board certified CWRU School of Medicine faculty diverse in gender and race, aside from the vascular and cardio-thoracic surgeons.

The Heart and Vascular Center caters to a majority disenfranchised population with complex co- morbidities, multiple financial and social barriers and a racially and ethnically diverse population that provides a rich learning environment for the fellows.

Along with the Department of Population Health, the Heart and Vascular Center is active in developing measures to advance the health care and reduce care disparities in the community with quality improvement programs.

Intense clinical training is provided in diverse fields including ambulatory and inpatient cardiology, critical care cardiology as well as invasive and noninvasive cardiology imaging procedures. Our fellows are exposed to subspecialty cardiology training in electrophysiology, interventional cardiology, advanced heart failure and preventative cardiovascular medicine.

Our fellows are exposed to complex cardiac procedures including primary PCI for STEMI patients, complex coronary interventions, complex electrophysiology studies/ablations, watchman device implantation as well as expanding structural heart procedures.

The exposure to complex clinical scenarios and procedures is so abundant that fellows graduate as experts confident in all aspects of Cardiovascular medicine. The fellowship program has a collaborative relationship with the Cleveland Clinic Cardiology program for adult congenital heart disease and advanced heart failure.

In addition to the rich clinical environment, fellowship program has a strong academic foundation that is continuing from the dates of Dr. Lou Rakita who was the first Chair of this department. There is a Bench to Bedside Translational Research program that complements the clinical academics.

Besides regular didactics, fellows get to interact with world renowned Cardiologists through a visiting professorship program. Fellows lead inter-disciplinary clinical conferences with Emergency Medicine, Cardio-thoracic surgery and multi-modality imaging.

By virtue of a dedicated mentoring program for fellows, majority of our fellows have pursued academic careers, and some have been elected to very prominent leadership roles such as Governor of ACC.

Realizing the busy nature of the discipline, the Heart and Vascular Center encourages the philosophy of work life balance and promotes fellow wellness with a variety of activities.