Critical Care Medicine
The Anesthesia/Critical Care Section is made up of four dedicated critical care anesthesiologists who oversee the care of surgical patients in the 22 bed mixed surgical-medical intensive care unit at the Clement J. Zablocki Veterans Administration Medical Center. Three of the four intensivists are also subspecialty trained in cardiac anesthesia while the remaining faculty is board certified in Internal Medicine and Pulmonary/Critical Care in addition to Anesthesiology. This unit provides post-operative care for major vascular and a wide variety of general and subspecialty surgical patients. Although this unit is considered an "open" unit, there is a very close collaboration with the surgical services.
This critical care fellowship is designed to provide a multidisciplinary experience in taking care of the critically ill. The experience encompasses airway and ventilator management, placement and management of invasive hemodynamic monitors, management of a variety of drug infusions, nutritional support and medical ethics exposure. To that end, there is a structured educational curriculum that includes:
VA SICU/MICU conferences: Every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday at 11-12:00 noon or 1:30-2:30 pm. On Mondays, an attending of either the MICU or SICU service gives a lecture on a critical care topic. The audience includes medical and surgical residents, fellows and medical students. It is intended to supplement bedside teaching.
On Tuesdays, a journal club is held. A resident, fellow, or medical student leads the discussion on an important topic of critical care.
On Thursdays, either a SICU or MICU attending presents an interactive conference based on a critical care case.
FMLH SICU conference: Every Wednesday at 12:00 noon. The first Wednesday of each month, a faculty member lectures on a critical care core curriculum topic. The other Wednesdays are dedicated to case conferences, journal clubs and fellow lectures.
FMLH MICU conference: Every Friday at 12:00 noon. One Friday a month is a conference led by a critical care attending, one is a case conference lead by a critical care fellow, and one is a Morbidity/Mortality conference.
FMLH Combined Critical Care Conference: Every 3rd Thursday of the month at 12:00 noon. This conference is attended by all the critical care sections including Anesthesiology, Trauma, Medicine and Neurology.
The critical care fellowship is a one-year, ACGME-approved, Critical Care Medicine Fellowship. The fellow rotates through the VA Medical Center as well as the trauma (SICU), medical (MICU) and neurointensive (NICU) care units at Froedtert Hospital. The training is truly multi-disciplinary as the fellow will be working under the direction of faculty from Pulmonary/Critical Care, Trauma/Critical Care and Neuro/Critical Care. The exposure is broad and includes medicine patients, transplant, trauma, vascular, general, cardiothoracic and neurosurgical patients. The fellow is the leader of a team composed of anesthesiology, surgery, medicine, neurology and emergency medicine residents. Call at the VA-SICU is home call. Call at FH-MICU is home call and is rotated among the anesthesia fellow and pulmonary/critical care fellows. During the FH-SICU rotation, the fellow takes q 4 home call. The fellow has administrative control of ICU beds.
The fellow rotates approximately 4 months out of the year through the VA-SICU, 2-3 months through the FH-MICU, 2-3 months through the Trauma-SICU, and 1 month through the NICU. The remaining 1-2 months are electives that can be spent in research, PICU, electronic ICU and/or TEE. If the fellow elects to spend time in research, he or she may choose to base this research in either ongoing clinical or basic science research activities, or to develop his/her own independent line of research. It is expected that the fellow be able to prepare the research data in abstract form for presentation at a national meeting of anesthesiology or critical care physicians, as well as assist in the preparation of a manuscript for publication.
An optional second year of anesthesiology - critical care research also is available.
For more information about the Critical Care fellowship program, please contact our Medical Education Coordinator, at anesthfellows@mcw.edu. To apply for a fellowship with our program, please click on this link to obtain an online copy of the general application form.
Program Director:
Sylvia Dolinski, MD