Program Highlights
UMass Chan Medical School’s comprehensive learning experience is tailored to the fellow’s clinical and research interests.
The clinical experience is based at the UMass Memorial Medical Center, the primary teaching hospital of the UMass Chan Medical School.
Our accredited fellowship program provides a friendly training environment with the flexibility to focus on multiple elective opportunities by board-certified physicians and technicians. There is not overnight or weekend call during this fellowship, which allows for work-life balance and focus on the educational experience.
Our training environment includes:
- A state of the art interdisciplinary clinical and research ALS program.
- New England’s only interdisciplinary Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
program. - An NAEC level 4 comprehensive epilepsy program providing patient-centered advanced training in all aspects of epilepsy care.
- Epilepsy Monitoring Unit which provides experience in the monitoring and surgical intervention of high-risk epilepsy patients run by epilepsy-trained faculty.
- Unique training opportunities to learn multiple procedural skills (evoked potential and somatosensory evoked potential, sleep disorder, autonomic testing, Botox injection, skin nerve fiber biopsy).
- A Neurological Rehabilitation and Recovery Clinic.
- Dedicated neuropathology faculty involved in teaching.
- Established a Neurodiagnostic Center with experienced certified EMG and EEG technologists who are supportive of procedural training and efficient clinic workflow.
- Dedicated subspecialty board-certified teaching faculty who are institutionally and nationally recognized for their commitment to medical education.
- A collegial and supportive learning environment with an established record of accomplishment of training clinically strong Clinical Neurophysiologists.
Curriculum
Fellows attend and participate in lectures, seminars, research meetings, and conferences during the year. We encourage the fellow to attend regional or national society meetings and to present their work. Trainees are reimbursed for the cost of attending academic conferences where they are primary presenters of scholarly activity.
Weekly Tuesday - Interdisciplinary neurology conferences
Fellows participate in the clinical neurology conference with collaborative colleagues from neurosurgery, neuro-interventional/neuro-IR, radiology, and other specialty groups to provide collaborative interdisciplinary patient care. The fellow must take part in at least one presentation during the training year.
Conferences
The fellows will participate in multiple educational conferences throughout the year run by various specialists.
- Neuropathology conference: A monthly nerve/muscle biopsy session with the department of pathology that provides an opportunity to deepen the understanding of active clinical cases.
- Epilepsy/Surgical Epilepsy conference: A multidisciplinary monthly review of challenging epilepsy cases with neurosurgery, adult and pediatric epileptologists, and technologists.
- One-on-one didactic lectures: Direct and individualized didactic review of complex topics in Clinical Neurophysiology such as advanced management of epilepsy, immune suppressants in the treatment of neuromuscular diseases.
- One-on-one review of complicated cases, EMG/EEG studies and waves, and long-term EEG monitoring.
Active participation in medical education: The fellow will also participate in weekly residents’ EEG/EMG sessions and will be actively involved in the teaching of these sessions and resident board review sessions covering topics in Clinical Neurophysiology in the second half of the fellowship year
Journal Club occurs every other month covering recent updates and advances in the field of neuromuscular disease and epilepsy. The fellow presents important peer-reviewed literature under faculty supervision to the Department of Neurology in the divisions of neuromuscular disease and epilepsy, residents, and technologists. This allows the fellow to keep up with the most recent published evidence base and practice their individual appraisal skills which are important for continued learning in independent practice post-fellowship.
The fellow will attend our regular monthly Neuromuscular/EMG, Epilepsy, and Surgical Epilepsy conferences and help organize some of them.
Rotation Schedule
The program provides clinical and didactic training in cognitive and procedural skills to prepare fellows to be well-rounded board-certified Clinical Neurophysiologists with the option to tailor training to a fellow’s area of interest.
Fellows are supported by multiple subspecialty-boarded physicians (Clinical Neurophysiology, Neuromuscular, Epilepsy) and experienced EEG/EMG technicians.
All training is completed at the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, MA.
This fellowship is primarily outpatient based, though fellows regularly complete inpatient EMGs and EEGs. There are no weekend or overnight calls during the fellowship training.
Electives and Sample Rotation Schedule
Research and Clinical Opportunities
Our neuromuscular program is led by world-renowned neuromuscular and ALS specialist, Dr Robert Brown. We have a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary clinical and research program in ALS; New England’s first and only interdisciplinary Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy program led by Dr Brenda Wong, in which interested fellows are encouraged to participate. We also have a strong Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy clinical research program. In addition, many of our neuromuscular and epilepsy physicians are interested in clinical research. There is ample opportunity to get involved in clinical or basic research in neurophysiology.