Pediatric Cardiology Fellowship Program

Pediatric Cardiology at Arkansas Children's

Welcome and thank you for your interest in the Pediatric Cardiology Fellowship Program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children’s Hospital! We are pleased that you are interested in our program and are excited to show you the world-class training available at our Heart Center. Our goal is to train the next generation of excellent clinical pediatric cardiologists, researchers, educators, and leaders in our field. While this is far from a comprehensive list, below I have highlighted three priorities of our program.

First, our program provides excellent clinical training. Our children’s hospital has 336 beds and is one of the largest in the nation. With two stand-alone children’s hospitals and five clinic locations, we care for the entire state of Arkansas and are the only pediatric cardiology group in the state. We perform 350 cardiac surgeries, 390 catheterizations, ~12 heart transplants, 10,000 echocardiograms, 400 TEEs, 1,000 fetal echocardiograms, and 400 cardiac CT/MRIs per year. We have a 31-bed cardiovascular intensive care unit, two cardiac operating rooms, and two brand-new hybrid catheterization suites. Our fellows are deeply integrated into our Heart Institute and graduate with the confidence to care for a high volume and broad array of pathology.

Second, our program feels like a family. If you train with us, we will treat you as a valued colleague, not a subordinate trainee. We believe that our fellows are one of the greatest assets of our program, as they bring energy, new perspectives, questions, and an opportunity to influence generations to come. In addition, I am blessed to work with some of my best friends. We work hard together, struggle together, laugh together, and spend time outside of work together. While we are made up of imperfect individuals like any other program, we truly believe that we are a family unified in the noble pursuit of providing world-class care to children and families suffering from heart disease.

Third, we strive to provide best educational practices. Much of education in medicine is provided by physicians with minimal educational training. They often default to teaching the same way they were taught, primarily utilizing lectures. We recognize that our fellows are adults, and thus should be treated like self-directed rather than dependent learners. The old paradigm of hour-long lectures utilizing slide shows are of limited effectiveness. To that end, we have developed systems that encourage fellows to learn in the midst of their clinical care in ways that are meaningful and make sense to them. Our formal didactic conferences are thoughtfully designed to be interactive and align with educational research. For further description of this educational philosophy, please see the following articles (1,2,3).

I am hopeful that as you peruse our website, you will strongly consider applying to our program. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Sincerely,

Josh Daily, M.D., M.Ed.
Fellowship Program Director
Email: JADaily@uams.edu
Cell: 479-790-9185