Toxicology Fellowship- Goals and Schedule

The UC Davis Medical Toxicology Program is designed to provide a comprehensive and fundamentally strong education in only 24 months of fellowship training. This makes for a very busy and demanding curriculum but by all measures we feel that it succeeds. A fundamental goal is that all graduates will be entirely capable of the independent practice of medical toxicology, in any one of a number of different settings at the time of completion of the fellowship program. All fellows are exposed to academic activities in terms of structured teaching responsibilities and a research requirement.

The clinical experiences have some aspects that are relatively unique and some areas of clear strength. The program involves two training sites, each with different patient populations, disease spectrums, and health care delivery models. The second training site is Mather VA Northern California Hospital, which is a heavily integrated national system. This provides a unique opportunity for the fellows in many ways. It also provides the program additional opportunities to achieve each of the educational goals of the fellowship. The inpatient consultations are heavily oriented towards critical care medicine.

We believe a successful program cannot rely solely on one method for covering the entire core curriculum so we employ a three-pronged approach. First, the fellows are required to read both acute care and occupational toxicology textbooks and to lead weekly discussions on assigned chapters. Second, we feel we have a very comprehensive clinical and didactic curriculum between the inpatient, outpatient, and VA settings. Lastly, we have allotted finances for the fellow to attend 2 conferences per year to further educate themselves on subspecialties of toxicology (Radiation Emergency Training/Medical Management of Biologic and Chemical/Advanced Hazardous Materials Life Support/Hyperbarics or any other approved conference at the fellowship director’s approval).

PCC: Poison Control Center

VA: VA Northern California Medical Center

*High fidelity simulation based on schedule availability

Rounds will occur every day when there are inpatient consults.