Advanced Practice Provider Fellowship in Critical Care Medicine
The UK College of Medicine offers a one-year fellowship for advanced practice providers (APPs) in critical care medicine. The fellowship, hosted within the department of anesthesiology, consists of 12 months of full-time training beginning after satisfactory completion of either an adult-gerontology acute care nurse practitioner or physician assistant program. Graduates of the fellowship program are awarded a certificate of completion.
The UK Chandler Hospital is multifaceted with multiple certifications including being a Level I trauma center, a TJC Comprehensive Stroke Center, an Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO) Center of Excellence, and possessing American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet status among many others that provides care for some of the highest acuity patients in the nation.
The division of critical care medicine provides primary consultative critical care in the cardiovascular ICU (CVICU), the neurosciences ICU (NSICU), and the surgical ICU (SICU) at the UK Chandler Hospital. Our APPs are truly integral parts of the critical care team, managing the daily care of patients in many of these ICU settings. Fellows will receive graduated responsibility in the management of these patients.
Critical Care Clinical Experience
Fellows will rotate primarily on the neurocritical care and surgical critical care services, along with the opportunity for elective rotations designed to enhance their overall education. These rotations provide a foundation of basic critical care management as well as exposure to many aspects of subspecialty care. On the neurocritical care service, fellows will gain experience managing patients with neurological and neurosurgical conditions including acute ischemic stroke, subarachnoid hemorrhage, status epilepticus, and traumatic brain injury. The surgical critical care service provides experience in the critical care of patients on a number of surgical subspecialties including the liver transplant, vascular surgery, colorectal surgery, surgical oncology, head and neck surgery, and thoracic surgery services. Possible electives include cardiothoracic critical care, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), interventional neuroradiology, trauma surgery critical care, and palliative care, among others.
Critical Care Didactics
Informal bedside didactic training is provided by both our critical care medicine physicians and our APPs every day. Formal didactics include dedicated APP fellow lectures on a variety of topics, from critical care fundamentals to specific subspecialty topics. Monthly simulation lab exercises are designed to give fellows the opportunity to practice in a safe environment with feedback from APP faculty. These exercises will include the performance of invasive procedures, management of emergency situations, how to interact with patients' families, delivering bad news, and other critical care topics. Specialized training in the use of point-of-care ultrasound for the diagnosis and management of critical care patients occurs throughout the fellowship, with specific didactic training as well as hands on guidance by APP and physician faculty. Oral and written examinations at various points throughout the year serve to assess the fellow's progress and identify areas where additional training would be beneficial. In addition to the specific training unique to the APP fellowship program, APP fellows have access to multiple learning opportunities throughout the academic medical center, including multidisciplinary conferences, radiology conferences, and subspecialty lectures.
Fellowship Project
Fellows will complete an academic project throughout the year, ultimately leading to publication and/or presentation at a local or national meeting. In conjunction with their faculty mentor, the fellow will identify an area of specific interest and then design and implement their project. Examples of previous projects include training ICU nurses in the use of point-of-care ultrasound to place peripheral IV catheters, implementation of a rounding strategy to improve communication between the ICU nurses and critical care medicine teams, and presentation of a case study of a patient with unique pathology at an international meeting.
How to Apply
The University of Kentucky's Critical Care APP Fellowship begins on July 1 of each year. Applications will be posted in January of each year and are available on the UK Healthcare jobs site (https://ukjobs.uky.edu/).