Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine Fellowship

The goal of the pulmonary and critical care medicine fellowship program is to provide broad pulmonary training combined with multidisciplinary critical care medicine training. This fellowship is a three year program, although it may be longer for those who desire a research pathway. Eligible residents must have completed an ACGME-certified internal medicine program.

Our program offers the opportunity for scholarly work for all fellows, as well as a rigorous experience in research for those who wish to pursue a physician-scientist career.

Clinical Training

The first 18 months of fellowship are focused on the core clinical rotations for pulmonary and critical care medicine training:

• Inpatient pulmonary consult service
• Medical intensive care unit (MICU)
• Veterans’ Administration pulmonary consult service and MICU
• Lung Transplant
• Stem Cell Transplant/Oncology ICU
• Progressive pulmonary care unit (long term acute care)
• Continuity clinic

The core rotations are supplemented by additional rotations to broaden the experience and training in pulmonary and critical care medicine:

• Inpatient and outpatient cystic fibrosis service
• Inpatient and outpatient pulmonary hypertension service
• Sleep
• Pulmonary function lab
• Inpatient interventional pulmonology
• Anesthesia/airway rotation
• Chest radiology
• Surgical intensive care unit
• Cardiothoracic intensive care unit
• Cardiac care unit
• Neurosurgical/Neurologic intensive care unit

Research Training

After completion of the first 18 months of clinical training, all fellows will enter the scholarly portion of their fellowship. Fellows have two options at this point: for those interested in protected time for advanced training in research (including advanced degrees), the opportunity exists to dedicate the next 24-36 months to research on the physician-scientist pathway funded by our NIH T-32 training grant. Alternately, fellows may choose to be on a clinical pathway for the next 12 months, during which time there will be light clinical rotations allowing ample time to complete the research project. Regardless of the pathway, each fellow has a primary mentor and a program advisor, with whom they meet during the course of their training to help them accomplish their goals at the end of training.

Participating in the training grant requires a commitment of an additional 6 months on top of the 3-year fellowship, because when on the training grant, fellows receive a minimum of 24 months of protected research time, starting at 1.5 years after their clinical training. The only clinical obligation when on the training grant is ½ day per week of outpatient clinic; the remainder of the time is entirely committed to research training, on a project designed between the trainee, the primary mentor and an advisory committee. Appropriate research projects for the T32 training grant can span the entire spectrum of basic science, translational science, or clinical investigation based projects. For those fellows on the training grant, there is the opportunity to complete graduate-level certificates and/or master’s degrees in clinical investigation and health behavior research and evaluation, such as those through the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences. Admission to the T32 program includes the possibility for an additional 12 months of funded, protected time if needed, in order to prepare for and submit career development awards

On the clinical pathway, fellows will return to full clinical rotations for the last 6 months of fellowship and finish up any data analysis and manuscript preparation from their research time. On this pathway, the last 6 months of fellowship generally involves 1-2 months of MICU and/or lung transplant, otherwise there is significant flexibility to spend this time pursuing clinical experiences to best prepare the fellow for their post-fellowship career.