Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Fellowship

The Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Fellowship is the only program of its type in Arizona. The fellowship has been accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education since 2011 and the first fellows started in 2012.

Fellows achieve the goals and objectives of the program through direct patient care, supervising other trainees and completing a comprehensive curriculum, including conferences, didactic lectures, courses, hands-on learning activities, and workshops.

Phoenix Children's has 48 PICU beds, 48 CVICU beds, and is a Level-I pediatric trauma center. On average 2,700 patients are admitted to the PICU each year while 1,000 patients are admitted to the separate CVICU. The postgraduate medical education program has three core residency programs, sixteen ACGME-accredited fellowships, and eleven non-ACGME accredited programs.

Admissions to the PICU and CVICU originate from the Phoenix Children’s Emergency Department, or hospital wards, from elective and emergent surgeries, trauma services, or from neighboring communities and states. Many referrals of diverse ethnic groups come to Phoenix Children’s, so understanding and accepting the varied cultural beliefs and practices within these groups is an important part of optimizing the patient and family care experience at the hospital.

In the PICU, fellows take care of the typical variety of patients as well as a large spectrum of complex disease processes. The hospital’s association with Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center allows fellows to take care of a variety of patients with neurological disorders such as traumatic brain injury, tumor surgery, craniosynostosis repair, and epilepsy surgery. Fellows work with various transplant populations, including liver, kidney, heart, and bone marrow. Fellows provide care to many patients with toxic ingestions and overdoses.

In the CVICU, fellows care for patients with complex congenital heart disease, with an emphasis on single ventricle patients due to the single ventricle program at Phoenix Children’s. Phoenix Children’s also has a very active ECLS program, which provides fellows with the experience of caring for multiple patients on either VA or VV ECMO simultaneously as well as managing eCPR emergencies. Fellows deal with patients requiring ventricular assist devices such as Centrimag/Pedimag, Berlin heart, Heartmate III, and total artificial heart (Syncardia).

Intensivists provide in-house, around-the-clock coverage of critically ill patients with nurse practitioners and fellows assisting in care. Pediatric Critical Care Medicine provides an important training ground for residents in the Phoenix Children’s Pediatric Residency Program Alliance.