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Schedule Overview

Orientation

Fellows will spend the first two weeks of July in orientation. Orientation will start at the department level and with our GME office before starting with our program-specific orientation. Orientation will introduce you to the key clinical and research aspects of our program. This time will include learning procedural skills and performing a simulation on the Golden Hour. After the first two weeks of orientation, each first-year fellow will pick one night to shadow a senior fellow for the evening to get an idea of how the call night flows before their first call night. New fellows will shadow senior fellows in the unit for up to a week to learn about the flow before starting in the NICU.

Education

Clinical Care

All clinical activities take place in the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital. Our Level IV NICU has 88 beds. Our NICU is divided into four teams:

  1.  Neonatal Critical Care Unit (NCCU)
  2.  Nurse Practitioner Team
  3.  Teaching & Transport Team
  4.  Level 6 of the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital

The NCCU is the unit with the highest acuity. Delivery room experience occurs when rotating on the NCCU. On the nurse practitioner team, the fellow and faculty member lead a team that manages our patients with chronic lung diseases/BPD and a variety of other diagnoses. Most of our long-term ventilated babies, and babies with tracheotomies are on this team. On the teaching and transport team, the fellow and faculty lead a team of residents and the neonatal transport team. This team also provides run reviews to the transport team. Our lowest acuity unit is on level 6 of the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital. This is the unit that does the bulk of discharges. Fellows rotate here in their third year unless they decide to do an elective here. 

Fellows also rotate in two clinics. The fellows maintain a panel of patients in the high-risk infant follow-up clinic. The fellows also see patients in the Perinatal Care Clinic, which allows them to provide consultation to families with known complications in pregnancy that will likely result in a NICU admission. 

Research

Non-clinical time is devoted to research and quality improvement projects. Each fellow participates in a research project that will result in a scholarly work product by the end of their training.

Vacation

Vacation is included in the 3 weeks per year of paid time off.

Benefits

On Call Schedule

Call nights are divided equally among fellows. A senior fellow makes the service and call schedule each year with the program director providing oversight. All call nights are in-house. Each year, there is at least one night covered without any fellows prior to the annual departmental fellow retreat.