The Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellowship program at Wake Forest University School of Medicine offers a comprehensive training program to fellows who have completed a Cardiovascular Disease fellowship.
Director's Welcome
Prashant D. Bhave, MD
Overall, I feel that we give our trainees a comprehensive two-year cardiac electrophysiology training experience.
Natalie Bradford, MD, FACC
You've had time in the lab, you have done complex cases from start to finish and you come out ready to practice. You also come out with regular conferences with a great knowledge set and the tools to continue to advance in the EP specialty as it continues to rapidly grow.
S. Patrick Whalen, MD
We do the full gamut of procedures. We have a very interactive and busy surgical hybrid program doing VT and AFib ablation. We have an active left atrial appendage closure program. We do over a hundred lead extraction per year, removing over 200 leads per year. And we have a very busy bread and butter electrophysiology program, including endocardial and epicardial VT, atrial fibrillation SVT, and device implantation. The EP fellows get a very rich procedural experience. Because we have generally three or four rooms running and two EP fellows, they get to sort of graduate through the complexity of the procedures that we see. Most of our fellows graduate with 50 extractions with hundreds of transseptal ablations with experience in the OR seeing what a surgeon does with epicardial access, getting to do endocardial and epicardial ablation. We also have a simulation lab to help them get a chance to do hands-on with the more unusual or infrequent or more complex procedures that they might not have a chance to do frequently as a fellow, such as epicardial access or appendage closure.
Prashant D. Bhave, MD
We have six faculty, each of which trained for electrophysiology at different programs. So we have a variety of approaches and I think that that really provides the fellows with a different armamentarium of approaches to help them build their own skillset so that when they become independent operators, they can draw on a wealth of experience to be successful in their pursuits.
S. Patrick Whalen, MD
And we hope that by the end, we graduate a fellow that's thoughtful, effective, efficient, and is going to perform complex and safe procedures very readily.
Prashant D. Bhave, MD
Additionally, I feel that some of the strong points of our program include the opportunities for consultative medicine. We do have our fellows act as independent consultative attendings as they get further into their training to help with their decision making. Additionally, we provide dedicated time for academic pursuits, such as writing manuscripts and performing other research projects. So every week, 10% of the fellow's time can be dedicated to research projects so that they can move those projects forward without feeling overburdened by their clinical commitments.
Natalie Bradford, MD, FACC
I think that one of the major strengths of the EP program is the mentorship aspect. When you leave a fellowship, you want to feel comfortable and prepared, and you want to have resources for mentorship in the future. And I know that from being a graduating fellow here to transitioning to faculty and having an interim where I was in private practice, that this is a great location to have a source for mentors.
Prashant D. Bhave, MD
Other aspects that I think are strengths of our program are our didactic teaching conferences. We have a EP specific conference on a weekly basis, which is a mix between didactic lectures from our faculty combined with morbidity and mortality conferences, combined with case conferences presented by our electrophysiology fellows. Certainly, we invite our general fellows that are interested in electrophysiology to join us in those conferences so that those that are electrophysiology bound can kind of get a headstart on their electrophysiology fellowship.
S. Patrick Whalen, MD
Wake Forest is a great place to be. It's a good place to be trained. The fellows and the faculty are happy and interact well together. It's also a great place to be from. So those are not always the same thing, and I think that's one of the real strengths of this program. It's a great place to be and a great place to be from.
Natalie Bradford, MD, FACC
And I can say from being a fellow here myself years ago, that this is a wonderful time and a great time in your life and a great time to make long-lasting friends.
The fellowship provides extensive experience in all areas of electrophysiology.
Program Goals and Objectives
The Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellowship program curriculum is designed to support our goal of developing world-class physicians in the field of electrophysiology. We accomplish this by meeting the educational objectives that we have outlined for the Electrophysiology Labs, the outpatient arrhythmia clinic, weekly conferences, inpatient consult service, and research opportunities.
Electrophysiology Lab
EP Fellows have exposure to a wide variety of cases in our electrophysiology (EP) laboratory. Fellows gain extensive hands-on experience with device implantation (including conduction system pacing), device extraction, left atrial appendage occlusion, diagnostic EP studies and SVT ablation, AF ablation (including multiple PFA platforms), and complex ablation for ventricular tachycardia.
We have an active industry-sponsored research program and we are actively enrolling for multiple current device and ablation trials.
