Immunology Rotation

Goals and Objectives

By the end of the rotation, the Resident will demonstrate the following skills:

Patient Care

• Know the test of choice for the identification of specific viral diseases, including viral isolation, detection of viral antigens, detection of genomic nucleic acid, or viral serology.
• Know the fundamentals of testing for human immunodeficiency virus, and to be able to correlate the results with the stage of the patient's disease and treatment.
• Learn current tests available for the detection of syphilis, including the ability to correlate test results with disease stage.

Medical Knowledge

• Know the advantage and disadvantage of serology tests for diagnosis of infectious diseases. -Understand the sensitivity and specificity of each test.
• Understand and interpret the serology panels of HIV, Hepatitis, EBV, CMV, HSV, Syphilis, Rubella, Toxoplasmosis and Lyme disease.
• Understand laboratory technologies and testing algorism for evaluation of autoimmune diseases including both systemic rheumatic diseases (such as SLE, dermatomyositis/polymyositis, mixed connective tissue disease and rheumatoid arthritis) and organ specific diseases (such as celiac disease, autoimmune hepatitis and multiple sclerosis).
• Understand laboratory evaluation of allergy.
• Understand laboratory tests for evaluation of immune deficiency.
• Understand laboratory evaluation and monitoring of patient with monoclonal gammopathy.

Practice-Based Learning and Improvement

• Interpret and sign out protein electrophoresis and immunofixation cases.
• Identify and interpret ANA patterns.

Interpersonal and Communication Skills

• Demonstrate skills in interacting with the technical staff.
• Provide consultation about diagnostic immunology tests including infectious serology, autoimmune, immune deficiency, allergy and monoclonal gammopathy to clinicians. 

Duration

Training in immunology is one week

Duties and Responsibilities of Residents

Because Resident training in this rotation is taught at one point in time, there is no incremental responsibility in different years of training. During the rotation each Resident is expected to perform the following activities:

Teaching Staff

• Susan Zhang, MD, PhD, DABCC, DABMLI, HCLD - Director of Diagnostic Immunology

Supervision and Evaluation

• Residents meet on a regular basis with the Directors and with the lead technologists for supervision.
• Written exams are administered to evaluate the extent to which residents completing the rotation have gained knowledge of critical aspects and laboratory functions in flow cytometry and histocompatibility.
• Residents are evaluated on a monthly basis with regard to attainment of the Core -Competencies specified in this Program Statement. Evaluations are forwarded to the -Residency Program Director, where they are available for review.