In our comprehensive two- to three-year fellowship program, you will receive a broad range of hands-on clinical experience and individualized instruction from nationally known physicians and investigators in a collegial environment.

Fellowship Experience

Our program provides superior nephrology training in a collaborative environment. We have specialty clinics across our medical campus, which is anchored by our 1,200 bed inpatient center UAB Hospital—the eighth largest public hospital in the nation. The hospital is in close proximity to the Birmingham VA Medical Center, UAB Hospital Highlands campus, The Kirklin Clinic, and Children's Hospital of Alabama where fellows also train.

Patients come from all over the state to take advantage of our life-changing care, offering a diverse population and breadth of clinical learning opportunities. We approach medicine in a multi-disciplinary modality across a broad variety of nephrology-related conditions through mandatory and elective rotations. We accept applications through the Electronic Residency Application Service.

Clinical Rotations

We offer our fellows a unique opportunity to customize their curriculum by incorporating various subspecialty clinics that align with their special interests, broaden their clinical exposure, and achieve their career goals. Working one-on-one with various faculty members in different subspecialties provides a strong foundation and builds confidence in the treatment of all nephrology diseases. In addition to our clinical nephrology inpatient consult service, fellows will rotate through our multidisciplinary acute, chronic, cardio-pulmonary critical care, transplant evaluation clinic and kidney biopsy consult services giving our trainees exposure to a wide variety of nephrology diseases, enabling them to experience an enriched and broad patient population.

A two-year fellowship satisfies the requirements for application to ABIM subspecialty certification in nephrology, however, a three-year fellowship is available for persons interested in clinical or bench research and a career in academic medicine. Third-year fellow tracks also include interventional nephrology, critical care, and transplant nephrology.

Elective rotations include clinical or basic science research (paired with a mentor), transplant wards, home dialysis modalities, interventional nephrology, renal pathology, pediatric nephrology, plasmapheresis, specialty clinics (rare genetic clinic, hypertension clinic, glomerular disease clinic, cystic kidney disease clinic), outside elective, and fellow’s choice.

Teaching Conferences

Our training program offers fellows ample teaching opportunities. They are responsible for training residents and rotating students, leading the consult service, and discussing cases with them daily. Fellows are required to present cases at conferences and deliver lectures to medical students on nephrology topics.

The Nephrology Research & Training Center (NRTC) Conference, the Renal Pathology Conference, and the Medical Grand Rounds are weekly opportunities for our faculty, fellows, and staff to hear from experts in a multitude of fields both within and outside of UAB. Topics vary from ongoing research projects to clinical vignettes with discussion of the nephrology disease process.

All conferences are open to faculty, fellows, residents, students and staff, and are held in a hybrid format with the option to attend in-person or virtual via Zoom.

Research Opportunities

Research is an essential part of our training program. Our fellows are required to find a mentor during the first four months and begin working on their projects during their first year. This time is spent meeting with the associate program director for research to discuss research opportunities, followed by meetings with selected faculty members offering long-term projects of interest to the fellow. Research time increases significantly during the second and third years of training, with fellows expected to dedicate approximately 75% of their second year and 90% of their third year to research projects. Those resubmitting proposals receive 65% protected research time in the second year.

Research may be in clinical or basic science projects depending on fellow interests. By the end of the second year of training, our fellows are expected to prepare their research findings and submit them for publication. Presentation of their research findings at regional or national scientific meetings is strongly encouraged.

Frequently Asked Questions