The Internal Medicine RRC has adopted a new policy for the minimum numbers of polysomnograms, multiple sleep latency and maintenance of wakefulness tests that a fellow must score and interpret during their Sleep Medicine Fellowship.

The Program Requirement states:
"Fellows must have formal instruction, clinical experience, and demonstrated competence at the completion of education in the following: the indications for and potential pitfalls and limitations of diagnostic tests and the interpretation of the results in the context of the clinical situation. These diagnostic tests must include the following:

  1. Polysomnography, scoring and interpretation of polysomnograms and recognition of artifacts, including montages with additional EEG leads for seizure detection
  2. Multiple sleep latency testing
  3. Maintenance of wakefulness testing

The policy states:
To meet this requirement, a fellow must interpret at a minimum 200 polysomnograms and 25 multiple sleep latency or maintenance of wakefulness tests. At least 40 polysomnograms must be in children. A maximum of 5 multiple sleep latency tests or maintenance of wakefulness tests may be archived studies. In addition, they must score at least 25 polysomnograms, of which 5 must be in children.

The policy will be added to the list of FAQs, a resource for sleep medicine fellowship training programs, which is available on the ACGME Web site at www.acgme.org/acWebsite/RRC_140/140_sleepFAQ.pdf.