Fellowship Curriculum

Program Curriculum

The first year curriculum involves five months of clinical rotations in our, twenty two Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), two months in the Heart Center Intensive Care Unit (HCICU) at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital, one month of Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at MD Anderson Cancer Center and four weeks of pediatric anesthesia, which includes exposure to cardiovascular anesthesia and procedural sedation, one month of combined Critical Care Patient Transport and Trauma rotation. A comprehensive two-weeks orientation is completed at the beginning of the fellowship which includes participation in the Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Annual Bootcamp.  Research time completes the curriculum in the first year, of which the goals include: identification of a research mentor, protocol writing and IRB submission. The year concludes with a presentation of the protocol to the scholarly oversight committee (SOC).

The second year curriculum includes five months of clinical rotations in the PICU, two months in the HCICU and one month of PICU at MD Anderson Cancer Center. During this year the fellows will have increased autonomy and responsibility in patient care.  Four months of protected research time complete the schedule of the second year curriculum. The fellows will execute their main research project, completing their data collection and data analysis. The progress of the fellow’s research project is closely monitored by the SOC, which is expected to meet biannually with the fellow. Case reports, secondary research studies, presentations, publications and Quality Improvement projects involvement will be part of the scholarly activities presented to the SOC.

The third year curriculum is designed to prepare the trainees as future critical care attendings. They will have three months of Senior Fellow rotation where they will coordinate clinical care supervising Junior fellows in their PICU and HCICU rotations. They will finalize their clinical rotations with one month of Pre-Attending where they will lead the clinical rounds and primary decisions of patient care. At the beginning of this year a manuscript of the research needs be prepared and submitted for publication before completion of the fellowship. We expect the primary research to be submitted to a national conference. Third year fellows should present their research at the UTHealth Houston Pediatric Fellows Research Symposium. They need to finalize their QI projects and submit a Journal Club discussion in the PedsCCM.org. The fellow is expected to meet biannually with the SOC in the third year and present their final work in the division Research meeting.