Training
Clinical Opportunities
The PICU is a state-of-the-art facility featuring private rooms for all patients, isolation rooms, and ample family support areas. It functions as a closed unit and uses nearly all forms of advanced life support technologies. The patients are separated into two-physician teams: PICU and PCICU (Pediatric Cardiac ICU). Our fellows rotate and lead both teams throughout their clinical training. The PCICU team is composed of PCICU faculty, PICU fellows, Cardiologists, Cardiothoracic Surgeons, Advanced Practice Providers.
The PICU has an active extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) program with new state-of-the-art equipment that provides support for a wide variety of critical conditions in neonates and pediatric patients. Designed to be multi-disciplinary, the team in the PICU also includes dedicated pediatric respiratory therapists, pediatric pharmacists, pediatric dietitians, child recreation therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and social work. The close-knit relationship between the pediatric nursing and physician staff is consistently rated as excellent.
Fellows are directly involved in all aspects of clinical management and decision-making for PICU and PCICU patients. They also provide direct supervision and education to fourth year medical students and residents from pediatrics, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, as well as other departments.
Research Opportunities
The UNC Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Fellowship is designed to provide the best possible research opportunities for fellows. Recognizing the individual nature of each fellow, we have tailored several programs to achieve the goals defined by the individual fellow.
Critical care fellows are given extensive research opportunities in both clinical research and basic science research, as well as quality improvement and medical education with strongly protected research time.
In the first year, fellows are encouraged to participate in a clinical research project and are introduced to the diverse research opportunities within and outside of the Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. In the second and third years, extensive protected time is provided so that each fellow can complete their research requirements. Education and review sessions occur at least monthly and provide the fellows with a significant amount of opportunity for review.
The major focus of the research experience is to learn how to design a hypothesis-driven research project, acquire the necessary technical skills to test the hypothesis, analyze the data and present the work.
Each fellow’s research is developed and monitored by a Scholarly Oversight Committee comprised of at least three faculty with at least one PCCM faculty and other members with content specific expertise. All fellows’ research is expected to result in a first author peer reviewed manuscript in a high-quality medical journal.