The UK Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit is a 32-bed closed ICU reserved for cardiothoracic surgery and cardiovascular medicine patients. During the CCU experience, fellows are expected to function as the junior attending on service. This includes supervising medicine residents, providing procedural oversight, and leading our multidisciplinary ICU team. In addition, UK remains an ELSO (Gold Award) Center of Excellence and provides interested fellows a unique experience to serve as primary caretakers for patients on mechanical circulatory support (e.g. ECMO, balloon pump, percutaneous LVAD, etc).

Function as the cardiology consultant for all non-cardiology inpatient services at University of Kentucky hospital.

Lead the inpatient cardiology (non-ICU) service supervising medicine residents/interns. This fellow functions as the consulting cardiologist for the UK emergency department. In addition to routine cardiology consultations and patient triage, this includes cardiovascular emergencies (e.g. STEMI, high risk NSTEMI, emergent temporary pacing wires, etc) and functioning as the on-call physician for our pulmonary embolism response team (PERT), which is housed internally within the division of cardiology.

Cardiologist on call for both the University of Kentucky hospital and the Lexington VA hospital. This fellow provides oversight for all inpatient cardiology services and responds to cardiovascular emergencies with support from internal medicine residents.

Performance of cardiac catheterization one-on-one with interventional attending from vascular access to the end of procedure.  Majority of the experience will be on the diagnostic procedure, but have opportunity to engage in interventional experience for those interested in an interventional cardiology career.

Interpret nuclear stress tests, echo, cardiac CT, cardiac MRI at the Lexington VAMC.

Inpatient consult service for any device or arrhythmia related issues. This rotation is focused on consultative EP in the inpatient setting and provides fellows with significant autonomy and hands on experience with device interrogation and programming. There is opportunity for an invasive experience for those interested in an electrophysiology career.

Caring for inpatients and outpatients who have end-stage heart failure.  This includes patients who are on mechanical circulatory support, home inotrope, LVAD, BiVAD, as well as patients who are being worked up for heart transplant or transplant recipients.  Fellows will also participate in the weekly LVAD/Transplant listing meeting

Interpret nuclear stress tests (SPECT and PET) and PYP amyloid studies, and go review the results with attending physicians.  Fellows have the opportunity to supervise stress tests, and learn about radioisotope handling. A close working relationship with the nuclear cardiology technologists provides fellows with the 80 hours of hands-on training necessary to complete the CBNC (Certification Board of Nuclear Cardiology) requirements on-site.

Perform transthoracic echo with sonographers during the morning and interpret echoes independently with faculty oversight in the afternoon (including ASE Richard Propp Teaching Award winners Dr. Mikel Smith and Dr. Vincent Sorrell). Access to a transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography simulator (HeartWorks; intelligentultrasound.com) which has normal hearts as well as an expansive series of pathology teaching modules, provides an unique opportunity to perfect this critical skill.

Gain experience in the indications/contraindications and performance of cardiac CT and MRI.  We are one of the few centers that fellows will be exposed to the use of stress cardiac MRI, CT FFR, and interpretation of advanced cardiovascular imaging in complex congenital patients with pediatric cardiology imaging specialists.

Gain experience in the indications/contraindications and hand-on performance of transesophageal echo (one-on-one with the attending). The TEE simulator (HeartWorks) allows for unlimited practice of this skill.

Act as the primary cardiac consultation for all of VAMC with supervision of an attending.  This is one of our consistently, highest, fellow-rated rotation, which is reserved for 3^rd year fellows to gain experience in autonomous practice.