Surgical Critical Care Fellowship Program

The ACGME-accredited Surgical Critical Care Fellowship at MedStar Washington Hospital Center is a one-year program, providing training in all aspects of the care of critically ill surgical patients. An optional second year is sometimes available to gain further experience in clinical trauma/emergency general surgery and or trauma/critical care research. 

The section of Surgical Care is a component of the Department of Critical Care at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.

We believe that exposure to the gamut of surgical pathology provides the best critical care training. The fellowship is structured yet allows each fellow to tailor their experience to meet individual goals and clinical needs. The Surgical Critical Care faculty is a well-integrated group of board-certified physicians from the disciplines of trauma and acute care surgery, emergency medicine, anesthesia, pulmonology, and others. We are consistently rated as the top teaching service in the hospital for bedside education.

The educational philosophy of the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship program is to provide a strong foundation of advanced surgical and critical care knowledge and skills, upon which a scientifically sound, systematic approach to the management of critically ill patients can be developed.

This program provides trainees with an advanced level of specialized skills required to attain a mastery of all aspects of surgical critical care for patients of all age groups. Trainees will be afforded the opportunity to become specialists in the clinical management of critically ill patients, in teaching learners at multiple levels, in conducting research, in the administration and management of both a surgical intensive care unit and a trauma and acute care surgery program.

The goal of the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship is to train surgeons in the subspecialty of Surgical Critical Care. This fellowship will prepare the graduating fellows to function in various settings including an academic center and a high-volume clinical environment.

The fellow will have a robust experience in and exposure to the clinical aspects of critical care, teaching, administration and research.  The fellow is enabled to investigate and evaluate, teach, and apply the fundamental principles of critical care at the bedside.

We believe that at this advanced stage of surgical training, fellows know their educational needs better than anyone. We strive to tailor each fellow's year to their needs and as an adult learner, the fellow has a self awareness of their education needs.  We strive to tailor each fellow's training, such that:

In addition to core content in the surgical ICU and cardiovascular ICU, fellows will rotate on the Palliative Care service to learn adjuncts to the management of critically-ill patients at end of life. Fellows have the opportunity to select from a variety of electives, including trauma surgery, acute care surgery, anesthesia, and echocardiography.  Additionally, fellows have the opportunity to design their own electives.

Night call

There will be four calls per month. In general, two calls will include coverage of surgical critical care units; two calls will include coverage of the trauma service" should read "There will be four call shifts per month. In general, this entails two calls covering the trauma service and two calls covering surgical critical care units.