Clinical Sleep Training at Brigham and Women's Hospital

The Sleep Disorders Program was created within the Division of Sleep Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 1996. Our faculty and staff include sleep specialists, pulmonologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, physiologists, biomedical engineers and technologists. The Division of Sleep Medicine is in the Department of Medicine. The Division, under the direction of Charles A. Czeisler, Ph.D., M.D., F.R.C.P., performs research and clinical activities related to sleep and chronobiology. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and founding member of Partners HealthCare System, is consistently rated as one of the top ten hospitals in America by US News and World Report.

The primary missions of the Sleep Disorders Program are to deliver the highest quality patient care, expand the boundaries of medicine through research, and teach through training and continuing education. Our faculty and staff continuously seek new ways to demonstrate our leadership role in basic and clinical research, as well as product research and development. We accomplish our teaching mission through training the next generation of health care professionals and future leaders in sleep medicine and providing continuing education on sleep subjects to other health care professionals. Our staff physicians and basic scientists hold faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School.

Fellowship Program

The fellowship program is a two-year program with a clinical first year (~ 80%) and the second year almost completely research (~ 90%). The clinical year is spent learning to care for patients with all types of sleep disorders.  Fellows see patients in clinic under staff supervision and learn about sleep study acquisition, scoring and interpretation in our attached sleep laboratory.  There will be rotations in pediatric sleep medicine, otolaryngology, neurology/EEG and an elective.  Fellows will also see inpatients through our consultation service at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  Fellows will also attend a weekly case conference, research conference and monthly Division of Sleep Medicine Grand Rounds.  The Fellows have a weekly continuing care clinic during their second year.

All fellows within the training program are expected to complete an independent research project(s) under the direct guidance of a faculty mentor. Faculty include: Charles A. Czeisler, PhD, MD (a leader in the field of human circadian biology), Stuart F. Quan, MD (sleep disordered breathing, general sleep disorders), John Winkelman, MD, PhD (Restless Legs Syndrome and parasomnias), Steven A. Shea, PhD (a noted respiratory/circadian physiologist), Liming Ling, PhD (a respiratory physiologist studying brain stem mechanisms of ventilatory control and more recently, the effect of sleep deprivation on ventilatory control), Clifford B. Saper, MD, PhD (a leading sleep basic neurobiologist) and Robert Stickgold, PhD (studying sleep and memory) among others. The Fellowship Training Director is Lawrence J. Epstein, MD. Each fellow develops an individual research plan and then spends the majority of their research time in the recruitment of subjects (as appropriate), the carrying out of the research project, data analysis and preparation of manuscripts for publication.

Fellows are paid based on the NIH scale for postgraduate fellows. The standard benefits package is available through Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Fellows are allowed to “moonlight” as long as those commitments do not in any way interfere with their primary training responsibilities.

If interested, please send a cover letter stating your reasons for applying to the Sleep Medicine Fellowship Program, the application, an up-dated copy of your curriculum vitae and three letters of recommendation to:

Lawrence J. Epstein, MD
Attn: Sleep Medicine Fellowship Program
sleep_training@hms.harvard.edu