Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Medicine Fellowship
This 12-month fellowship is focused on the clinical assessment, evaluation and management of the critically ill neonate, infant or child with congenital or acquired heart disease. The fellowship will build on a strong foundation of pediatric critical care and/or neonatal intensive care training through exposure to high volume, high complexity pediatric cardiac surgical, mechanical extracorporeal life support (ECMO, iLA, VAD), pediatric pulmonary hypertension and critical care transport programs at the Stollery Children’s Hospital.
The Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit in Edmonton is currently a 16-bed environment. It is part of the Cardiac Sciences program at the Stollery Children’s Hospital and a surgical site for the Western Canadian Children's Heart Network; a program that provides complex cardiovascular care to a broad geography encompassing the majority of Western and Northern Canada with a referral population of 10 million. The PCICU admits more than 500 patients per year with a surgical volume of 400-500 cases per year (placing the program amongst the top 10 in North America). A high-risk interventional cardiac catheterization team complements the management and care of these patients. The unit manages a high volume of pediatric ECMO, VAD and heart and lung transplant.
Exposure will consist of rotations in the PCICU and structured rotations in cardiac echo, cardiac electrophysiology and cardiac catheterization. Elective opportunities are available in heart failure/VAD, pulmonary hypertension, and adult congenital and pediatric cardiac anesthesia.
In 2017, we moved into a new state of the art unit in the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute. This has allowed a one room-one patient ideal care model which provides ample space for extracorporeal support devices, yet still allows for dedicated family space promoting our philosophy of patient and family-centered care.
We typically will take one to two senior fellows per year (and only one senior fellow on rotation at a time) based on availability of suitable candidates and/or funding. We also have core Pediatric Intensive Care fellows and Pediatric Cardiology fellows that rotate through the PCICU. We infrequently have residents from other services. Our clinical model of care is such that two faculty PCICU Intensivists are on clinical service at a time. This means that a senior Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Medicine fellow will have concentrated clinical exposure with an established successful model of onsite faculty mentoring.