The Surgical Critical Care Fellowship program is an ACGME/RRC accredited training program, offered through the University of San Francisco Fresno, Department of Surgery. This one year fellowship is based out of Community Regional Medical Center (CRMC) in Fresno, California. CRMC has 650 beds (68 ICU beds) and is the only Level 1 trauma center between Los Angeles and Sacramento. This catchment area within the San Joaquin Valley includes an approximate area of 15,000 square miles and a population of approximately 4 million, resulting in more than 4,000 annual trauma-related visits to the Emergency Department. Approximately 20% are severely injured (Injury Severity Score > 15) and 25% go directly from the ED to the OR or the ICU.
Clinical Rotations include: trauma intensive care unit, cardiovascular, intensive care and emergency level 1 burns care settings, medicine intensive care, pediatric intensive care, and surgical intensive care. The goal of the Fellowship is to enhance skills in the management of critically ill and injured patients. For the patient with traumatic injury, management begins with initial evaluation and resuscitation and operative management and continues until discharge. The Fellow is involved in comprehensive critical care management issues, such as multidisciplinary committees and protocol development.
Although the clinical care and didactic instruction are the backbone of this experience, the Fellow concurrently participates in research and administrative activities. A Fellow is expected to take advantage of the wealth of clinical and trauma registry data available for clinical research. In addition, the SCC Fellow is directly involved in medical education. It is anticipated that this fellowship experience will result in a well-rounded surgeon who has the tools for leadership positions in Surgical Critical Care/Trauma Surgery and who has learned to function in an intensive care unit (ICU), providing quality and effective care. Upon successful completion the fellow will be eligible to sit for the ABS Surgical Critical Care Examination.
There are twelve core faculty affiliated with the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship program.
All faculty are critical care board certified surgeons and are active in all aspects of trauma, surgical care, emergency general surgery.