-
CycleTrack and SDN are teaming up to make medical school admissions more transparent and accessible! Read the announcement to learn how we’re supporting the future of CycleTrack’s free application-tracking tools .
Combined NICU/PICU fellowships?
Started by BPD
Get help with your application
Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.
They are really pretty different-not a ton of overlap, even in the ventilator management, since the weenie ones have such unique physiology. Plus, they both tend to be clinically intensive programs, so you'll be hard pressed to reduce clinical time for either one. I've heard of combining PICU/Pulm, and PICU/Cards, and PICU/MICU; I think in all three cases the fellowship is still at least 5 years. Are there jobs that require both NICU and PICU? The only real overlap I see is the cardiac surgery kids.
When I was a medical student my then neonatology attending was trying to convince me this would be a great thing for me to do and that programs should be launching by the time I was in the middle of my pediatrics residency. I'm now a Med-Peds attending so it's interesting to hear the topic being brought back up. It's an interesting thought (my former attending was arguing it would be good training for a rural tertiary care center where you maybe had a level 2 NICU and perhaps a small PICU). I suppose that since we've seen some of our PICU technology coming from the NICU (ie ECMO, HFOV--although adult oscillator is a little different, etc.) you might get overlap there. Plus there is the common ground of enjoying critical care which happens in both arenas.
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
The answer is yes, it can and has been done. There is a possibility that it could be completed in four years time. That would require a special curriculum to be designed that meets the approval of the American Board of Pediatrics for training in both areas. It will also require finding a hospital where the PICU and NICU don't mind sharing the cost of a combined fellow. Likely you would spend one year straight in each specialty. Then you would do your research, etc with various times on services in the areas. The more common pathway would be to finish training in one area and then to spend two years training in the other. Some of your research experience in the one would count towards the other.
I know all this because I looked into doing it and on some level am still considering it. It would give you the ability to basically run a children's hospital and I agree that it would be advantageous for some smaller community hospitals. The question I still have is could you really effectively practice both. The people I have heard that did this usually practiced one versus the other.
I know all this because I looked into doing it and on some level am still considering it. It would give you the ability to basically run a children's hospital and I agree that it would be advantageous for some smaller community hospitals. The question I still have is could you really effectively practice both. The people I have heard that did this usually practiced one versus the other.
Do you happen to know of the hospitals that have had this program in the past? Or were they "persona" specific where it really was up to the applicant to coordinate everything and push for the fellowship?
Oh my god - combined PICU/NICU. Are you insane? Why on earth would you torture yourself that way?
I worked as a tech in an NICU for four years. One of our attendings had a husband finishing up an NICU/PICU combined fellowship at the University of Utah (four years). She said he enjoyed the peds more, but the NICU experience is extremely helpful. They both just moved to South Dakota where he took a job as a PICU attending. The NICUs I have experience with did not take patients born outside the hospital or ones not directly admitted to the NICU. This means that the PICU would recieve newborns frequently that were readmited to the hospital after birth. I could see how NICU experience in this case would greatly benefit physicians in the PICU. Also I would frequently see babies that were in the NICU go home for a couple of weeks and then would get sick again and would have to admitted to the PICU, once again experience with the NICU would probably be a good advantage here.
If you petition the ABP you can cram a combined fellowship into four years instead of five. It's tricky and seldom done nowadays. Remember peds fellowships are three years because of the substantial amount of research that is required. If we only had to do clinical work, we could do combined fellowships in 3 years too.
