Dr. Ugochukwu Egolum, program director of the Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship program at Northeast Georgia Medical Center (NGMC), is making national moves on the cardiology scene, giving the NGMC fellowship program more visibility, and attracting competitive candidates.
Dr. Egolum was selected to be part of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Curriculum Design committee, which oversees educational offerings and provides approval, accordingly. The ACC – which is the largest cardiology organization in the United States – selects its committee members from a nationwide pool of applicants, where only 10 or so are selected from hundreds of applicants.
“With the current move to establish a new cardiovascular disease board, our committee will be integrally involved in the process of designing and implementing the core aspects of this new board,” said Dr. Egolum. “As such, being involved in this allows NGMC to be at the cutting edge of where cardiovascular disease education is headed and being able to leverage this as we enhance the education of our cardiology fellows.”
“We are very lucky to have Dr. Egolum leading the NGMC Cardiovascular Disease fellowship,” says John E. Delzell, Jr., MD, MSPH, vice president of Medical Education for Northeast Georgia Health System and Designated Institutional Official for NGMC. “His expertise and guidance are vital to the success of our young fellows since they benefit greatly from his involvement and influence with the national academic cardiology community.”
“We are proud of Dr. Egolum’s accomplishments as our founding NGMC/Georgia Heart Institute fellowship program director – his experience at NGMC and leadership at the national level will be impactful for continuing to develop our cardiovascular fellowship program and designing new cardiovascular fellowships,” says Dr. Habib Samady, president of Georgia Heart Institute.
Dr. Egolum was also recently invited by the ACC Fellows-in-Training Leadership council to participate as a panelist during their upcoming webinar discussing the process of applying to cardiology fellowship.
“The goal of this webinar is to review the process for applying to cardiology fellowship and introduce applicants to the Cardiology Applicant Mentorship (CAM) Program, which pairs applicants with fellows to conduct virtual mock interviews in hopes of helping applicants navigate the virtual interview season,” said Dr. Egolum, who was one of a few program directors nationwide who was invited.
Dr. Egolum is also a member of the Association of Black cardiologists (ABC) and was selected as the committee co-chair of the Fellows in Training committee (FIT). In this role so far, he has chaired a virtual national symposium (300+ attendees) geared towards assisting prospective cardiology fellowship applicants with information about best practices for landing a competitive fellowship in cardiology. Additionally, Dr. Egolum chaired an in-person ACC/ABC symposium at the recently completed ACC national meeting, which included a mentoring session and poster session for residents and cardiology fellows.
(Left to Right) Dr. Habib Samady, president of Georgia Heart Institute; Dr. Egolum, program director, Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship program; Dr. John Delzell, VP of medical education and DIO.
To learn more about the Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship program at NGMC, click here.