Educational Experience

The goal of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship is to train board-eligible or board-certified internists in the subspecialty of both pulmonary and critical care medicine. Fellows will be exposed to the clinical aspects of pulmonary medicine and critical care medicine as well as teaching, and research in order to prepare them to function in either an academic center or a community hospital environment. The duration of the fellowship is three years.

The first year is predominantly clinical, with the majority of time spent in the pulmonary consultative service, Interventional pulmonary service medical/surgical ICU and additional time in related clinical areas, such as intubation training, critical care consulting service. The second and third year provides time in the following areas: additional clinical experience in Interventional pulmonary service, pulmonary consultative service, critical care units, elective and research. Fellows who intend to pursue academic careers are encouraged to spend at least six months on a research rotation.

Our fellows have the opportunity to train in critical care medicine with world-class multi-disciplinary physicians as teachers, with whom you will interact and provide mentorship during your educational experience. We not only have pulmonary and critical care physicians as faculty, we have critical care faculty members with subspecialty training in Infectious disease, nephrology, anesthesia and emergency medicine. We are an ECMO center. Our fellows have the opportunity to manage cardiothoracic surgical patients, neurosurgery and vascular surgery patients. Airways are managed by the fellows under direct supervision of faculty.

We have a world class simulation center where trainees go through our curriculum in bronchoscopy, mechanical ventilation, and ECMO.

We have had a 100% board pass rate in both pulmonary and critical care for over 10 years.

Procedures

The attending physician has ultimate responsibility for care rendered by the fellow. Therefore, depending on the procedure and the degree of experience of the trainee. Supervision of procedures, when required, will be under direct observation of the fellow performing the procedure by the attending physician.

Over the years our procedural services gave grown in the area of advanced bronchoscopic procedures, giving our trainees the unique opportunity to spend 5 or more months of bronchoscopy and advanced pulmonary procedural service, allowing training  in procedures such as therapeutic and diagnostic bronchoscopy, endobronchial ultrasound with transbronchial needle aspiration, navigational bronchoscopy, cryo biopsy, transbronchial biopsy.  Our fellows gain extensive experience in the management of pleural diseases including thoracic ultrasound, chest tubes and tunneled pleural catheters. 

Pulmonary fellows have the opportunity to participate in more advanced procedures with our two interventional pulmonologists including percutaneous tracheostomy, pleuroscopy, endobronchial valves, bronchoscopy lung volume reduction.

Our trainees learn to perform and interpret pulmonary physiologic testing including cardiopulmonary exercise testing and pulmonary function testing.

Other unique opportunities

  • We have a very close relationship with the medical school and a unique opportunity for our trainees as teachers, have the potential to have an academic appointment as a clinical instructor. Our fellows have been honored for their teaching by the medical students by awarding the golden apple award.  Those who take the opportunity to apply for an academic appointment will have an advantage when applying for employment at an academic institution or subspecialty training.
  • Our fellows have the unique ability to be certified in advanced bronchoscopic and pleural procedures.
  • In addition, our fellows have the opportunity to be board certified in echocardiography.
  • We have had a 100% board pass rate in echocardiography.