Surgical Critical Care Fellowship

Surgical Care

Our program is designed to provide surgical critical care fellows with an education in the principles and practice of advanced trauma and surgical critical care according to medical knowledge and patient care, practice-based learning and improvement, systems-based practice and professionalism, as well as interpersonal and communication skills.

This is accomplished by exposing the surgical critical care fellows to a broad array of surgical illnesses through didactic instruction in the basic and clinical sciences, as well as education during teaching rounds, primary patient care, educational conferences and specialized rotations.

Upon completion of training, the surgical critical care fellows are expected to integrate the acquired knowledge into the clinical situation to demonstrate proficiency in:

• Surgical critical care decision-making

• Specific organ system support

• Evaluation of new technology and treatment techniques

• ICU administration

• Outcomes assessment

• Research design

• Interaction with patients, families and other medical professionals

Our fellowship is individualized to each fellow and is focused on developing the fellow's future practices whether in academics or a private setting. The fellowship year is also customized to address specific deficits that fellows might have with respect to operative, non-operative and interventional management.

The surgeons in the Division of Trauma, Critical Care and Acute Care Surgery at Baylor Dallas have always been closely involved in general surgery resident education, as well as research and quality initiatives.

The surgeons also serve as Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine faculty and are heavily involved in medical student education.

Rotations

• Surgical and trauma ICU (STICU) – four months

• Cardiothoracic and transplant surgery ICU (CTICU) – four months

• Medical intensive care unit (MICU) – one month

• Acute care surgery – one month

• Two elective months (only one can be non-surgical)

Operative experience is encouraged throughout the whole year, and we believe this is crucial in the training of the surgical critical care specialist.

Fellows participate in home call during the weekdays, but there is one dedicated fellow on call for the weekends. This allows for adequate time off.

Conferences

Conferences for Surgical Critical Care Fellows include:

• Weekly combined pulmonary critical care and surgical critical care/trauma didactic lectures

• Weekly surgical critical care didactic lectures given by attendings, fellows, nurse practitioners and residents

• Monthly Journal club

• Process improvement and quality assurance meetings

• Research meetings

• Specialty conferences based on rotations

The fellows also will participate in the Multidisciplinary Critical Care Knowledge Assessment Program (MCCKAP) along with ASSET, ATLS and ATLS Instructor courses which are funded by the program.

Research

Critical review of research is an integral requirement for the fellows. The fellows are expected to create two Practice Management Guidelines for Trauma topics and keep the current guidelines up to date.

Also, there are dedicated research lectures by active researchers and meetings with research support staff that includes a Director of Trauma Research who holds a Doctorate degree and has over 120 publications. The fellows are expected to develop at least one research project and to submit it as an abstract for presentation at a national-level conference and complete a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

There also are ample opportunities to accomplish this during the one-year fellowship with several active research projects and up-to-date databases that are specific to our program.

A budget is available for travel to a national conference for trauma or critical care.