Surgical Critical Care Fellowship
Surgical Critical Care fellowship at UC Riverside / Riverside University Health System
The Riverside University Health Systems Medical Center (RUHSMC), an ACS-COT verified Level I trauma center and Riverside county-designated safety net hospital, is home to the RUHS/University of California Riverside surgical critical care fellowship. We are dedicated to the mission of providing acute care and critical care services for individuals of all backgrounds. We maintain a tradition of caring for the underserved and a commitment to improving the wellbeing of our culturally and socioeconomically diverse population in Riverside and surrounding counties. The Department of Surgery hosts a comprehensive range of services to treat a wide range of high-acuity pathophysiology: not limited to trauma, vascular, oncologic, gastrointestinal, plastic, and minimally invasive surgery. RUHSMC is home to academic programs with dedicated residencies in general surgery, emergency medicine, internal medicine, radiology, and psychiatry. Fellows, residents, and students from Loma Linda University and the University of California, Riverside also rotate on site to expand their educational experience.
RUHS is a 439-bed hospital with 12 operating rooms for inpatient services and an additional 6 operating rooms dedicated to elective operative services in our adjacent outpatient facility. Fellows have opportunities to follow patients throughout their entire course of care, from the emergency room and trauma bay to the acute care ward, surgical ICU, and operating room. The surgical ICU has 12 dedicated beds and supports the trauma, neurosurgery, emergency general surgery, and subspecialty surgical services, with a census average of 15 patients. Fellows work closely with our board-certified surgical critical care faculty to obtain experience in the evaluation of both trauma and emergency general surgery patients, the operative management of critically ill individuals, and the delivery of exceptional and compassionate surgical critical care. We foster professional growth through scheduled didactics, interdisciplinary education rounds, committee participation, and direct patient care. Our program enables fellows to serve as leaders and administrators of busy surgical intensive care units and prepares them to be robust contributors to the surgical critical care field.
Our rotations deliver diverse critical care experiences, exploring the high acuity and complex pathology seen in our own community and our neighboring institutions. Fellows will be exposed during a one-month rotation to our medical ICU, which is overseen by Pulmonary Critical Care board-certified specialists. During this rotation, fellows obtain further skills in airway management, transvenous pacing, and interventional pulmonology. Additional opportunities include rotations at the Loma Linda University Medical Center and Children's Hospital, an 825-bed Level I Trauma Center for San Bernardino County. There, fellows care for patients in the cardiac/vascular ICU and the neurocritical care unit, gaining experience with CABG, transplant, valvular heart disease, thoracic, vascular, neurosurgical and neurointensive patients. A rotation at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, home to the Edward G. Hirschman Burn Center, provides experience in burn resuscitation and surgical burn care and management for patients from across the counties of Riverside, San Bernardino, Inyo, and Mono.
Fellows maintain and foster surgical decision-making and operative skills on our trauma and acute care surgical services at RUHSMC. Our busy Level I trauma center sees more than 3500 activations annually. Our emergency general surgery rotation occurs on a busy and high acuity service with a diversity of general surgery cases and advanced pathology.
The faculty of the surgical critical care fellowship foster education and research opportunities for fellows to better our local community and to academically contribute on a national and international level. Fellows are supported to perform scholarly activity and are encouraged to participate with the hospital’s research institute, the Comparative Effectiveness and Clinical Outcomes Research Center (CECORC). CECORC serves as the hub of institutional research for RUHS with a dedicated full-time support staff of statisticians, trial coordinators, and research personnel to facilitate faculty and trainee research endeavors. RUHS has a dedicated on-site Institutional Review Board to review and support medical center projects.
Applications are reviewed and invitations extended for interviews starting in April and continuing through August. Applications may be submitted through the SAFAS portal.
PROGRAM OFFERINGS
- broad critical care exposure
- mentorship opportunities for trainees from many disciplines and levels
- high-volume operative experience
- access to test prep resources
- comprehensive, interdisciplinary didactics
- access to CECORC, a fully staffed research center supporting RUHS and the Division of Acute Care Surgery. Learn more here
- support for networking and job placement
- collegial environment
Our Surgical Critical Care faculty are all board certified in Critical Care. The Division of Acute Care Surgery serves nearly 10,000 patients annually. In one of the fastest growing counties in California and nationally, our fellows help to support a growing population, with ample clinical exposure and many opportunities for outreach.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROGRAM:
UCR/RUHS Surgical Critical Care fellowship offers a diverse experience and training in critical care, with rotations in Pulmonary Critical Care, Neurocritical care, cardiothoracic, and burn care.
Rotations to our regional partners at Loma Linda University and Arrowhead Regional Medical Center are hosted by critical care board certified physicians in high-level centers just down the road from the main site at RUHS.
