Thank you for your interest in our Surgical Critical Care Fellowship Program at University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. Our fellowship is a one-year, ACGME accredited program offered by the Divison of Acute Care Surgery, which consists of a core curriculum in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU). Upon completion of the fellowship, you can be Surgical Critical Care Board eligable with the American Board of Surgery.
University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics houses a Level-I Trauma Center with annual trauma admission greater than 2000, a Regional Burn Care Center, and a state-of-the-art Emergency Treatment Center as well as all specialties in medicine and their associated residency programs. The UIHC holds over 800 inpatient beds, including 128 ICU beds.
The mission of the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship is to provide an environment of education used to development technical skills and gain in-depth knowledge necessary to care for critically ill patients. critical care fellows from anesthesiology, emergency medicine as well as surgery receive advanced clinical training in an integrated environment. This training program employs a mix of hands-on clinical experience, interactive workshops, medical simulation and didactic education.
Surgical Critical Care Fellowship program aims to provide hands-on clinical experience and advanced instruction in the following:
The Surgical Critical Care Fellowship provides an outstanding exposure to complex surgical critical care and development of administrative skills that will allow the fellows ability to emerge into a leadership role upon completion.
All trainees will spend at least 6 blocks in the SICU, and then rotate to other intensive care units which provide extended educational experiences suited to the need of the fellow. Each trainee will be required to complete a minimum of eleven blocks of time in the critical care setting, two blocks of time in elective unit, with one block of time reserved for vacation (3 weeks) and meetings (1 week).
In addition to the SICU, other ICU rotations include: MICU, PICU, NICU, and CVICU.
Elective rotations include: Burn, Infectious Disease Consults, Pulmonary/Bronchoscopy, ECHO Lab, Nephrology Consult, Trauma, Emergency General Surgery, Anesthesia, Vascular Lab and Research.
Sample Block Schedule: (Each Block = 4 Weeks)
| Block | Rotation |
|---|---|
| Block 1 | SICU |
| Block 2 | Trauma/Burn |
| Block 3 | SICU |
| Block 4 | MICU |
| Block 5 | SICU |
| Block 6 | PICU |
| Block 7 | SICU |
| Block 8 | SICU |
| Block 9 | SICU |
| Block 10 | SICU |
| Block 11 | SICU |
| Block 12 | ECHO Lab |
| Block 13 | VAC |
Trainees are required to attend a weekly fellowship conference which consists of lectures given by SICU staff as well as local and national experts in critical care. Once a month, the fellow is expected to participate in the ICU management meeting along with all staffs involved in ICU patient care to discuss the operational business of the ICU and the issues related to patient care. Journal Club is also held monthly throughout the year to give fellows and faculty a chance to analyze and dissect current critical care literature. M&M Conference is held on a weekly basis in the Department of Surgery.
There is a wide variety of texts provided to the Surgical Critical Care fellow including the Department of Anesthesia Library and the University of Iowa Hardin Medical Library. In addition, there is a well-developed internet library of electronic textbooks and journals available at every computer within the SICU. Also in the SICU, there are a total of 127 titles, including 81 just added during the last 12 months as well as 13 journal subscriptions.