Pulmonary & Critical Care Fellowship Program Details | Hackensack University Medical Center

Rotations

MICU/CCU

A combined medical and cardiac ICU with 20 beds. Our fellows learn how to manage complex, critically ill patients with a variety of conditions and become extremely adept at all procedures including difficult airways and management of VV ECMO patients.

Pulmonary Consults

Our fellows rotate on a very busy inpatient consult service with a wide variety of cases and diseases. We routinely assist with the care of patients with bread and butter conditions such as asthma and COPD, while also helping to diagnose more unusual conditions including vasculitis and interstitial lung diseases.

Procedure

Fellows assist with all types of procedures in the Pulmonary Lab including routine bronchoscopies, thoracenteses, chest tubes and cardio-pulmonary exercise tests as well as more complex procedures such as EBUS and navigational and robotic bronchoscopies. Fellows also learn how to interpret pulmonary function tests and cardio-pulmonary exercise tests under the instruction of our faculty.

Cardiothoracic ICU

The CTICU is a busy unit where fellows are exposed to post-op cardiothoracic patients, LVADs, VA ECMO and the management of axillary Impellas.

Surgical ICU/Trauma

Our fellows have the opportunity to rotate in our surgical ICU and learn the differences in the management of medical and surgical critically ill patients. In addition, our fellows spend time with the Trauma service and learn about the management of trauma patients at our Level 1 Trauma center.

Neuro-Critical Care

Fellows round with our Neuro-Critical Care Team and learn the management of critically ill patients with acute strokes, intracerebral hemorrhages as well as the care of Neurosurgical post-operative cases.

Continuity Clinic

The outpatient experience is every week on Tuesday with fellows divided into the morning and afternoon sessions based on their rotation. Here fellows will see a broad variety of cases ranging from asthma and COPD, to sleep medicine, lung cancer and interstitial lung diseases.

Electives

Pulmonary Hypertension and Advanced CHF

Fellows spend two weeks rounding with our team of Cardiologists who are specialized in pulmonary hypertension and advanced CHF. Here they will become adept at the interpretation of RHC and will have the opportunity to help with catheterizations in the Cardiac Cath Lab.

Thoracic Surgery

Fellows will round with the thoracic team both on the floors and in their clinic seeing preoperative and postoperative patients. Our fellows will have the opportunity to learn surgical chest tube placement and observe and assist in cases in the OR with the thoracic team.

Thoracic Radiology

Dedicated time daily with our thoracic radiologists with more in depth education on reading routine radiographs and CT scans of the chest.

Sleep

Time in the sleep lab learning how to interpret sleep studies and outpatient time with our sleep director Dr. Villa on the management of all varieties of sleep disorders.

Unique Opportunities at Hackensack

There are a variety of unique opportunities available through our fellowship. Learn more here.

Our Campus

Hackensack University Medical Center is a 775 bed state-of-the-art hospital that serves as a tertiary referral center for a 18 hospital network in Bergen County, close to New York City. It is nationally ranked with many awards for excellence. In addition, the hospital is a major teaching site of the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, a new medical school with an innovative curriculum.

Currently our critical care team manages a 20 bed medical ICU and a 26 bed step down unit as well as an active critical care consult service. The team runs all the inpatient medical codes, responds to all needs for emergent intubations, and provides 24/7 critical care attending in-house coverage. All the ICUs and stepdowns are equipped with an advanced airway cart allowing escalation to various intubation tools, and a portable advanced airway backpack is taken to respond to off-site locations. This will initially house 50 ICU beds with plans to expand to a full 75 ICU beds.

Our fellows’ Pulmonary continuity clinic is based in our modern medical arts pavilion adjacent to the hospital. Just a few floors down sits our advanced Pulmonary Rehabilitation center. Located within the hospital is our well equipped bronchoscopy suite, PFT Lab, and exercise study lab. Interventional bronchoscopic procedures are performed by our faculty in the main operating room. We perform a broad range of interventional pulmonary procedures and work closely with Thoracic surgery in the management of many of these complex cases.