Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Fellowship

Do: Patient care

As a fellow physician, you play a key role in managing patients, spending time on both of our daytime teams as well as getting valuable experience in various electives. Our clinical unit is a 28-bed combined medical/surgical and congenital cardiac unit within University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children's Hospital. As a regional quaternary referral center, we serve a large swatch of the rural Midwest. Our unit cares for an astounding variety of "bread-and-butter" patients as well as fascinating patients with rare disorders or illnesses. We are a level 1 peidatric trauma center and our ECMO program is one of only approximately 30 around the world to achieve an ELSO "Platinum" distinction. 

Do: Education

Associate program director Shilpa Balikai, DO, leads our robust educational curriculum. 

Curriculum highlights inluce:

• Lectures on core PICU topics
• Alternating "white board" discussion sessions and interactive board review led by LeeAnne Flgyt, MD 
• Biweekly discussion forum on congenital cardiac lesion physiology led by Nicole Kamps, MD
• Critical Care simulation sessions led by Mitch Luangrath, MD, Kate Robb, MD, and Kari Wellnitz, MD

Your clinical education will be supplemented by a weekly clinical conference to discuss current patients, a practice that allows us to support our colleagues on service and learn from our patients collectively. Additionally, our fellows benefit from multidisciplinary sessions ranging from department-wide fellow curriculum to PICU and cardiac morbidity and mortality (M&M) sessions that frequently attract faculty from pediatric and adult divisions. 

Do: Research

The University of Iowa is a Tier-1 research institution in the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine enjoyed $295 million in external research funding in FY 2022, evidence of the broad support and collaboration in research endeavors that our fellows enjoy. Beth Newell, MD, is an NIH-funded physician scientist and our research director. She ensures you develop the skills to ask hypothesis-driven questions and have the tools to answer those questions. 

You are more than a physician and we know our clinical and educational goals are best met when our teams and their individuals are healthy. We know you will commit a significant amount of time to your clinical training, research, and education. That commitment, particularly in our field, can be mentally taxing and the other stressors of life do not magically disappear. That is why we articulate health and welbeing as priorities. 

In the hospital you will be asked to do hard things, as we all are, but we strive to enjoy the company and camaraderie of colleagues while doing challenging work. We support others and celebrate their successes. Our entire faculty are committed to helping you be the best version of yourself both here and beyond. We are committed to your health, balance, and overall wellness outside of work and emphasize the importance of personally rewarding experiences with friends, family, and colleagues.