Letter from Director

Our program is based within the Jefferson Sleep Disorders Center, the first sleep medicine program to be established in Philadelphia. Although the ACGME-accredited fellowship was instituted in 2005, the Center has hosted fellows since the mid-1980s. Our program is affiliated with Sidney Kimmel Medical College (formerly Jefferson Medical College), one of the oldest and largest medical schools in the country and an institution rich with medical history.

Our primary goal is to develop independent practitioners of sleep medicine. We provide a comprehensive curriculum that is suitable for physicians from all host disciplines. Core faculty members include Ritu Grewal, MD (Program Director), Zhikui Wei, MD (Associate Program Director), Dimitri Markov, MD, and Zhanna Fast, MD. The program has 20 additional faculty members representing multiple disciplines, including otolaryngology, pulmonary medicine, psychiatry, oral and maxillofacial surgery, neurology, psychology, pediatrics, cardiology, gastroenterology, and nutritional health. The diversity in faculty reflects the multidisciplinary nature of the curriculum. Fellows experience patients and perform testing in a wide range of diagnostic entities, utilize and learn the gamut of therapeutic options in sleep medicine, and develop competency in the evaluation and management of inpatient and outpatient sleep disorders in all age ranges. Fellows are also actively involved in teaching and research. Those who have completed our program have obtained careers in both academic and clinical environments.

I invite you to learn more about our program through this website.

If you wish to apply for a fellowship position, please forward your request and any other questions to Kia Speaks, Fellowship Coordinator. You may also contact Kia by telephone at 215-955-4715.

Sincerely,

Ritu Grewal, MD
Program Director, Sleep Medicine Fellowship

Just a little bit about me:

I graduated from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi India in 1984. I did my residency in internal medicine at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, NY followed by fellowships in critical care medicine at North Shore University hospital in Long Island, NY and pulmonary medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Medical College in New York City. I practiced pulmonary and critical care medicine for many years and then did a sleep fellowship at Thomas Jefferson University hospital from 2007 to 2008. I am a graduate of this program. Since then, I have been practicing sleep medicine and pulmonary medicine (ALS clinic) at Jefferson. I am also a case-based learning facilitator for first year medical students at Sidney Kimmel Medical College as part of the new JEFF-MD curriculum since 2017.

I devote all my clinical and academic time to taking care of patients as well as teaching trainees at all levels of training. I also mentor sleep medicine follows in clinical research projects and QI projects. Teaching is my passion. Medical students have nominated me to be on the education honor roll and I was awarded Deans award for excellence in education in June 2023.

I have been a member of the test writing task force in ABIM for Sleep Medicine Boards (2020-2022).

On a personal level I love reading books (historical fiction), walking my dog and exploring different neighborhoods in the city, seeing movies, Broadway musicals and of course the Philadelphia Phillies. I get Philly withdrawal when the Phillies have an off day.

What does this mean for you? As Program Director, I use my experience, both professional and personal, to make your fellowship a meaningful and fun learning experience.

I would also like introduce our Associate Program Director, Zhikui Wei, MD, PhD, who has included a little bit about himself below:

I was pursuing my graduate studies in Physiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where I developed a strong interest in a physician-scientist career. Therefore, I continued with medical education at Hopkins after obtaining my PhD in Physiology. After graduating from Hopkins, I went to Vanderbilt for neurology training after a short interval as a neurosurgery resident at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I returned to Hopkins for a Sleep Medicine fellowship afterward and joined the faculty subsequently at the Jefferson Sleep Disorders Center, Department of Neurology, and Department of Psychiatry and Human Behaviors at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

Since then, I have been treating patients with sleep disorders and neurological disorders at Jefferson. My interests are common sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, and central disorders of hypersomnolence. In addition, I am interested in treating sleep disturbances in patients with neurological conditions such as stroke, dementia, and epilepsy and patients with refractory restless legs syndrome to improve their neurological functions and overall health.

I also supervise trainees at all levels in the sleep clinic and the neurology resident clinic and attend the in-patient neurology consult service at Jefferson. I am passionate about developing a physician-scientist career in sleep neurology. Building on my PhD studies on basic mechanisms of metabolism, I recently received a physician-scientist training grant from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) to study sleep disturbances and metabolic dysfunction in older adults. I have also served as a co-investigator and sub-investigator in a few industry-sponsored clinical trials for central disorders of hypersomnolence and sleep apnea.

My goal as the APD for the Jefferson Sleep Fellowship is to help trainees acquire the knowledge and skills to become experts in Sleep Medicine. For those who are interested, I am also interested in helping trainees to develop a research career. Related to this, I am a member of the Research Career Development Committee of AASM and have been working on promoting research careers in sleep medicine for young investigators with other committee members.

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