Our program, for the most part, provides an "open model" ICU experience.
The central clinical location of the fellowship program is a 30-bed critical care unit comprised of a Surgical ICU and a Neuro ICU that accepts more than 1,800 admissions a year with an average daily census of 26 patients. This distribution provides fellows with the full spectrum of surgical cases and complex general surgical conditions, including severe pancreatitis, necrotizing fasciitis, etc. In addition, fellows do core rotations in the Trauma ICU, Cardiothoracic ICU, Critical Care Unit, Pediatric ICU, Medical ICU, Anesthesia and Critical Care Echocardiography, as well as two months of electives.
Our fellows supervise and teach medical students and residents. They alternate short workdays with long workdays and take two 24-hour Friday in-house calls a month. During the call, the fellow is responsible for all the critically sick patients in the main unit under the attending’s supervision. Every second Wednesday of the month is an administrative day dedicated to research and administrative duties.
Each day starts with the daily SICU sit-down rounds at 8 a.m., followed by daily bedside rounds. The didactic portion of teaching is done through a series of lectures, workshops, courses and conferences:
- Critical Care lecture series every Friday at noon (topics include airway management, ventilators, ischemic stroke, brain death and donor management, SAH and vasospasms, hemodynamic monitoring and fluid responsiveness, hyponatremia, and more)
- Anesthesiology Critical Care lecture series, Wednesday afternoon (Sept. – Dec.)
- General Surgery Grand Rounds, Thursday morning
- MICU Critical Care Board Revue, Thursday morning
- Weekly General Surgery Morbidity and Mortality Conference, Thursday afternoon
- Once-a-month Trauma Morbidity and Mortality Conference, Friday morning
- Monthly Critical Care Journal Club, Tuesday
- Monthly SICU Morbidity and Mortality Conference, Tuesday
- Bi-monthly Trauma Conference (combines Emergency Medicine, General Surgery, Orthopedics, Anesthesiology, Neurosurgery), Wednesday
- Vent Management, Extended Echocardiography Workshops
- Ultrasound Training
- Access for Fellows
- National Meetings*
*The program will support and fund any abstract/research presentations. A full-time research coordinator and statistician employed by the Department of Surgery are available to the fellow for assistance with research.
Goals & Objectives
The fellow will be evaluated by the director of the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship Program and the fellowship’s Clinical Competency Committee every six months and will receive feedback from the program director on a monthly basis. Evaluation criteria are based on the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education six general competencies:
- Medical knowledge
- Patient care
- Practice-based learning and improvement
- Interpersonal and communication skills
- Professionalism
- Systems-based practice
A thorough competency, understanding and practice in the following areas will be achieved by the fellow over the course of the program: burns (thermal and inhalation injury), cardiovascular objectives, endocrine objectives, ethics and palliative care, gastrointestinal objectives, hematology, infectious disease, monitoring and bioengineering objectives, neurological objectives, nutrition, obstetrics, pediatrics, pharmacology, renal objectives, respiratory objectives, statistics, transplantation, trauma, and ultrasound.
Research
The fellow is expected to actively engage in research throughout the fellowship. There is ample opportunity to initiate both basic science and clinical research projects. The fellow is required to complete Albany Medical Center Institutional Review Board (IRB) Certification for Investigator Training during the first month of fellowship. This is an online course which may be completed within a few hours.
Resources
Statistics
Ashar Ata, MPH, Statistician, Department of Surgery
[email protected]