Critical Care Fellowship

Welcome, and thank you for your interest in our Pediatric Critical Care Medicine (PCCM) Fellowship Program! We are excited to share some information with you about our fellowship, so you can understand the comprehensive, quality training we can provide you in PCCM, here in Arkansas!

The mission of our PCCM fellowship training program here at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and Arkansas Children’s Hospital is to train physicians with the cognitive and technical skills necessary to serve as skilled clinicians, competent educators, and scholars. The goals of our program include:

1. Education of fellows to understand, treat, and instruct on the biology of acute, life-threatening diseases and injury
2. Develop skills needed to provide end-of-life care to patients and families
3. Provide education necessary to develop cognitive and technical skills in order to prepare fellows to serve as skilled clinicians and competent educators,
4. Teach fellows to independently design and conduct scholarly research and
5. Cultivate an environment that is committed to equitable, diverse, and inclusive education and outreach to promote a sense of belonging within our community.

The majority of clinical experience for fellows occurs in the PICU at Arkansas Children’s Hospital.  Fellows also rotate through the CVICU, Anesthesia, and Sedation service.  Additionally, fellows are offered electives in a variety of clinical settings including transport medicine, clinical toxicology, renal replacement therapy, and cardiology (ECHO, EKG, and cath), to name a few.

The Section of Critical Care Medicine is actively involved within the American Academy of Pediatrics, Society of Critical Care Medicine, Pediatric Acute Lung Injury and Sepsis Investigators, Society for Pediatric Sedation, Extracorporeal Life Support Organization, American College of Graduate Medical Education, and American Heart Association.  This networking allows for scholarly advancement for all fellows and participation in multi-institutional studies.  Each fellow chooses a research project based on his or her own interests and gradually more time per year is devoted to research throughout the three-year program. Each fellow develops a Scholarship Oversight Committee, consisting of faculty that assist the fellow in developing and implementing a research project, with the goal of presenting this project regionally or nationally and having a manuscript or other ABP-approved scholarly work product for submission by the end of training.

We are excited that you are interested in applying to our PCCM fellowship program. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Sincerely,

Katherine Irby, M.D. and Matt Malone, M.D.

UAMS has offered subspecialty training in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine for the American Board of Pediatric eligible physicians since 1990.  As one of the oldest ACGME-accredited training programs, we have a track record of training clinicians with sound clinical judgment who have experienced a wide range of clinical scenarios as they train at the only PICU in the state of Arkansas.  Our traditional pathway is a 3-year fellowship training program that prepares physicians to take the ABP PCCM board exam.  Our institution also offers an additional year of training in CVICU through a separate application process.

Our program is housed at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, a private non-profit freestanding 336-bed children’s hospital initially established in 1910.  The facility in Little Rock, Arkansas served as the sole pediatric hospital in the state until Arkansas Children’s Northwest was opened in Springdale, Arkansas in early 2018.  The Little Rock campus continues to be the sole PICU in the state and serves as a referral center for the entire state of Arkansas as well as overlap areas in Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas.  Arkansas Children’s Hospital also serves as the only burn center in the state.  The burn center is unique in that adults and children are admitted to the burn center at ACH.

ACH Little Rock is also the home of Angel One.  Angel One is a very busy neonatal and pediatric specialty transport program with two dedicated helicopters, four ground transport vehicles, and available fixed-wing aircraft when indicated.  The PCCM faculty serve as medical control for all non-neonatal Angel One transports inbound or outgoing from our facilities.