Surgical Critical Care Fellowship

Our fellows rotate in five different intensive care units during the year. Each rotation lasts 10-11 weeks, with a three-week Acute Care Surgery rotation during the CVICU block and a three-week night float rotation during the Regions block.

University of Minnesota Medical Center: 

This 432-bed hospital overlooks the Mississippi River on the East Bank campus, and is the home site for our program. This is a national referral center for complex medical and surgical patients, an ECMO center of excellence, and a level 3 trauma center.

1. Surgical ICU: The fellow leads a team of surgery residents and advanced practice providers to care for complex general surgery, liver transplant, thoracic and foregut surgery, ENT, and VV ECMO patients. 

2. CVICU: The fellow works with anesthesia and surgery residents to care for patients with lung or heart transplants, multi-valve replacements, high-risk coronary artery bypass, ventricular assist devices, and aortic root operations. There is also opportunity to rotate in the cardiology ICU with additional exposure to VA ECMO.

3. Acute Care Surgery: Working with the ACS attending, the fellow will cover consultations and operations on both the East and West Bank campuses.

4. Night float: The fellow supervises surgery and medicine resident teams covering the SICU and MICU overnight, with primary responsibility for new admissions, procedures, and patient management with in-house attending backup.  

M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital: 

This large, tertiary referral center in Edina, Minnesota, has a 24-bed intensive care unit as well as the tele-ICU hub for the M Health system. The fellow joins two attendings to care for surgical, medical, cardiothoracic, and neurosurgical patients. 

North Memorial Health Hospital: 

This busy level 1 trauma center is an independent, 518-bed hospital serving north Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs. The fellow will cover the trauma/neuro ICU with an attending, run trauma activations, and participate in trauma and acute care surgery operations. 

Regions Hospital: 

This is a 435-bed hospital in downtown St Paul, Minnesota, that covers the east metro region and western Wisconsin. The fellow will lead a team of emergency medicine residents and advanced practice providers to care for critically ill polytrauma, vascular, surgical, and neurosurgical patients.

Curriculum:

1. Weekly conferences: Our fellows have protected time every week for faculty presentations that cover the scope of the critical care curriculum
2. Self-study: We provide fellows with a critical care textbook and access to the SCORE portal for self-study and boards preparation
3. MCCKAP: Our fellows take the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s Multidisciplinary Critical Care Knowledge Assessment Program as a benchmark and self-assessment tool midway through their year
4. We send our fellows to a variety of local, regional, and national educational events, including:
   1. SCCM Clinical Congress
   2. University of Iowa Point-of-Care Ultrasound workshop
   3. Hennepin County Medical Center difficult airway simulation lab
   4. National Institutes of Health course in advanced mechanical ventilation

Research opportunities: 

Our fellows have access to a broad variety of basic science, clinical, translational and informatics research opportunities, including: 

1. Surgical education research group
2. MNCORE — Minnesota Center for Critical Care Outcomes and Evaluation
3. The Costantini Lab
4. Clinical Quality Outcomes, Discovery, and Evaluation Core (CQODE)
5. Translational Center for Resuscitative Trauma Care
6. Global surgery

Support

Our fellows receive a comprehensive benefits package that includes health, dental, flexible spending accounts, and a suite of wellness benefits. For full information on the programs available to our trainees, see https://med.umn.edu/gme/education.

The University of Minnesota program accepts applications through the Surgical Critical Care Program Directors’ Society SCC/ACS Fellowship Application Service (SAFAS) at (https://safas.smapply.io/), and we participate in the National Resident Matching Program fellowship match process. 

In general, new applications open in March, interviews are held in May/June, and the match results are published in August of the year before appointment. 

Visa Sponsorship

The J-1 alien physician visa sponsored by the ECFMG is the preferred visa status for foreign national trainees in all UMN graduate medical education programs; therefore, the Division of Critical Care and Acute Care Surgery sponsors only J-1 visas. We do not sponsor H-1B visas. More information on the J-1 visa can be found on the UMN GME webpage.

2023-2024 Fellows

Mohammad Al Zoubi, MD - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis, MN

Nora Burkart, MD - University of Minnesota Physicians, Minneapolis, MN

Muhammad Ikram, MD - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis, MN

Kevin Kirkland, MD - CoxHealth - Springfield, MO

Derek Tessman, DO - SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital - Madison, WI

See the full alumni list on our Division webpage here.

The University of Minnesota Medical School is committed to excellence. Our mission will only be achieved through embracing and nurturing an environment of diversity, inclusiveness, equal opportunity, and respect for the similarities and differences in our community. We strive to create an atmosphere where differences are valued and celebrated, knowing institutional diversity fuels the advancement of knowledge, promotes improved patient care and fosters excellence. We will train a culturally aware workforce qualified to meet the needs of the diverse populations we serve. We especially strive to have our community better reflect the broad range of identities in our state, including race, ethnicity, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, age, national origin, religious practice, and socioeconomic status.