Fellowship in the Time of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): A Time to Adapt

Abstract

Over the past few years, the members of the fellowship class entering in 2017 have seen and participated in a number of memorable and what we believe to be career-defining cases, from massive ST-segment elevation myocardial infarctions to incessant arrhythmias to cardiogenic shock. As we started our third year of cardiology fellowship at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, we all understood that we had committed to a lifetime of learning from patients, and the challenging cases we continued to see as the fellow on call prepared us to be humbled by the unexpected. The weeks surrounding the developing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic suggest that we have reached that very point of unexpectedness. The very pillars of our fellowship training—patient care, education, and scholarship—have been upended by this unprecedented challenge.