Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship Curriculum

PCCM fellows will have the opportunity to customize their schedules to a certain extent. The following represents the major areas of training throughout the fellowship.

Goals

The overall goals are competency-based, and we strive to provide trainees with the proper education to:

• Provide patient care that is compassionate and effective.
• Develop a solid knowledge base in the basic and clinical science of pulmonary and critical care medicine.
• Cultivate a commitment to professionalism, with regard to all professional responsibilities, adherence to ethical principles and sensitivity to diverse populations of patients to whom they will provide clinical care and/or research.
• Pursue a lifelong commitment to practice-based learning and improvement so that they may continue to improve their patient care and research practices, and improve their skills to provide state-of-the-art education to medical students, physicians and other health care professionals.
• Build interpersonal and communication skills that result in effective interactions with their patients, families, colleagues and other health care professionals.
• Function in multiple capacities and/or settings, including: primary provider of care, consultant to other physicians, leader of a multidisciplinary health care team and teacher.
• Develop expertise not only in basic bedside intensive care unit (ICU) procedures, but also in the use of advanced technologies such as point of care ultrasound, navigational bronchoscopy and endobronchial ultrasound.

Years at a glance

All fellows will split their time among inpatient, outpatient and research experiences. A sample of the three year schedule is shown below:

Year 1: Three months of medical ICU (MICU), 4 months of pulmonary inpatient consults, and one month of each of the following: anesthesia, sleep, cardiac ICU, echocardiography and research

Year 2: Two months of MICU, 2 months of pulmonary inpatient consults, 3 months of research and one month of each of the following: advanced lung disease (University of Pennsylvania), surgical ICU, elective and neuroscience ICU.

Year 3: 2 months of MICU, 2 months of pulmonary inpatient consults, 1 month interventional pulmonary, 5 months of research and 2 months of electives.

Over the 3 year experience, fellows will attend one half-day session of Pulmonary Fellow Continuity Clinic weekly

Call schedule

Fellows will take in-house call once per week until 10 p.m. when rotating in pulmonary consults and ICU rotations. During surgical ICU month and rotations at University of Pennsylvania, call schedule will be at the discretion of the home division.

Elective rotations

Fellows will have an opportunity to take elective rotations in infectious diseases, nephrology, rheumatology, echocardiography, cardiology, among others.