The overall objective of the Critical Care Medicine (CCM) Fellowship Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) is to develop competent critical care practitioners and experts in supervising critical care units and to provide exposure to clinical research investigations.

Education

The education of our fellows, residents, medical students, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants is a vital component of the CCM Service. It is crucial for the growth of our specialty that we train the finest intensivists in our field. We offer one-year and two-year fellowship training in CCM. Our program is accredited by the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and certified through the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM).

The CCM fellowship has 12 fellows each year with a mix of one- and two-year fellows. The fellow’s background usually includes primary specialties in internal medicine and emergency medicine and secondary internal medicine subspecialties in pulmonary, nephrology, and infectious disease. One-year CCM fellows spend a total of 12 months of clinical rotations at three separate hospitals: MSK (7 months including 1 month in the operating room to optimize airway management skills); New York-Presbyterian Hospital (NYPH) Cornell Medical Center for experience in cardiothoracic surgery (1 month), surgical trauma (1 month) and neurocritical care (1 month), and the New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens (NYHMCQ) for a community based medical ICU rotation (1 month). The second year is designed to give the senior fellows more opportunities for directing the ICUs and mentoring the first-year fellows, as well as elective time to complete research projects initiated during the first year and expand their clinical experiences. Electives are available in echocardiography, infectious disease, pulmonary medicine, interventional pulmonology, and nephrology at MSK.

Our fellowship training program follows a detailed educational curriculum that incorporates a core didactic lecture series, visiting professor conferences, fellows’ grand rounds, ventilator and ultrasound workshops, journal clubs, simulation laboratory and ultrasonography training, weekly board review, and case review and morbidity and mortality conferences. Fellows are encouraged to participate in research, present at local and national conferences, publish peer-reviewed articles, and contribute to patient-safety and quality-improvement projects.

Clinical Care

Our faculty, fellows, advance practice providers (nurse practitioners and physician assistants), and residents provide daily care to patients in our state-of-the-art 20-bed adult medical-surgical ICU and throughout our 514-bed inpatient hospital. Two teams of clinicians, a traditional house staff team and an advanced-practitioner team supervised by board-certified intensivists, care for patients admitted to the ICU; a third team (Consultation/Rapid Response Team) provides consults and rapid response visits for acutely ill inpatients throughout MSK, and a fourth team (Critical Care Center Consult Team) provides care for patients in the Medical Stepdown Unit and consultation in the Neurological Advanced Care Unit. In 2021, CCM handled approximately 1100 ICU admissions, over 2100 ICU consults, and over 2800 rapid response calls including stroke alert and behavioral emergency calls.

Staff

Our current CCM faculty consists of 18 intensivists with training in internal medicine, pulmonary, anesthesiology, surgery, and palliative medicine. Critical Care faculty have appointments in the Departments of Medicine and Anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medical College. In addition to the CCM fellows, the ICU is staffed with anesthesiology residents from NYPH-Cornell. Medical students from Weill Cornell Medical College and other medical schools rotate through the ICU. Our advanced practice provider team includes 40 NPs and PAs, and our respiratory therapy team includes 60 therapists. Additionally, the CCM Service has a dedicated research nurse, nutritionist, social worker, patient care representative, computer programmer and informatics specialist.

Research

The CCM Service conducts clinical trials in sepsis/septic shock, pneumonia, and acute respiratory distress syndrome as well as collaborative studies with national and international critical care study networks. The CCM Service also performs “homegrown” projects exploring novel biomarkers in the critically ill, outcome studies of chemotherapy and ethics consultations in an oncologic ICU, and patterns of intra-hospital and inter-hospital transports, rapid response teams, and ICU readmissions. Our faculty includes experts in sepsis, integrated critical care organizations, use and cost of CCM in the United States, ICU design, and point-of-care laboratory testing.

Postgraduate Opportunities

Our two-year internal medicine–CCM and internal medicine subspecialty-trained fellows have secured critical care positions in community teaching and university-affiliated hospitals throughout the country. Over 140 fellows have completed fellowship training since 2000. Several pulmonary–CCM graduates have proceeded to pursue additional fellowships in sleep medicine and interventional pulmonology at prestigious medical centers including the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, and Henry Ford Hospital. Additionally, our graduates have become ICU directors, associate program directors of residency or fellowship programs, and departmental chairs as well as intensivists in large hospitals or private groups.

Applicants

The CCM Service welcomes applicants trained in internal medicine, medical subspecialties (i.e., pulmonary, renal, and infectious disease) and emergency medicine or emergency medicine/internal medicine. Our faculty is dedicated to teaching and providing advanced subspecialty training, and our trainees are highly qualified candidates who come from across the United States for this unique learning experience. We appreciate your interest in our program and encourage you to apply to become part of our team.

Length of Program

1 or 2 years

Number of Positions

Twelve

Program Eligibility

Eligibility for the Critical Care Medicine Fellowship requires a minimum of three years of ACGME residency training in internal medicine or emergency medicine in the United States.

How to Apply

Our program participates in the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS). ERAS will be used to transmit applications, letters of recommendation, transcripts, and other supporting credentials from applicants. To apply for our 2023 fellowship, please complete an application through ERAS starting on July 15, 2022. Interviews are conducted from August through October.

The following items must be in your ERAS Common Application before your application will be reviewed:

• Three letters of recommendation
• USMLE exam results (at minimum, steps 1 and 2 (both CS and CK))
• Personal statement
• Research experience/publications/presentations

All CCM trainees are now selected through the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP). To participate in this program, you must register through this service, available online. For additional information, please contact the program coordinator listed below.