Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship

Program highlights include:                             

The largest and most advanced provider of health care in the region

LVHN spans eight campuses totaling more than 1,800 licensed acute care beds. Fellows rotate most of their time at the main hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital (LVH)–Cedar Crest, and occasionally at LVH–Muhlenberg. LVHN functions as a major referral center for communities within a 50-mile radius, providing advanced therapies such as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and other forms of cardiopulmonary support, advanced bronchoscopy procedures (linear and curvilinear endobronchial ultrasound or EBUS, navigational bronchoscopy, laser therapy, etc.) and other therapies that parallel major academic centers.

Educational commitment

LVHN is continually committed to education including sponsoring many residencies and fellowships. PCCM education has been a key component of the division of internal medicine and has been recognized as one of the network’s top teaching experiences for residents, medical students and fellows of other specialties. Fellows will be supervised by our faculty of 21 physicians, all trained at large academic centers.

Clinical activity

The LVHN PCCM fellowship offers ambulatory and inpatient educational experiences at our LVH–Cedar Crest and LVH–Muhlenberg campuses.

Our outpatient continuity clinic experience will expose trainees to patients with a wide variety of pulmonary conditions from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma to advanced lung diseases including interstitial lung disease, cystic fibrosis and pulmonary hypertension, among others.

The critical care experience will expose fellows to a 78-bed intensive care unit that has high acuity of illness. Fellows will benefit from being at a referral center where, for example, over the past three years we have cared for more than 125 patients requiring ECMO. In addition, because of our educational affiliation with the University of Pennsylvania, fellows will be exposed to transplant medicine in this highly prestigious institution.

We give great importance to critical care ultrasound training. Fellows will get training not only from the pulmonary and critical care division but also in collaboration with the cardiology division. They will receive weekly didactic sessions as well as rotate with the echocardiography team for an entire month during their first year. After their second year, fellows will be eligible to become certified in critical care ultrasound by the American Registry for Diagnostic Medical Sonography.

Research and didactic experiences

Fellows participate actively in the regularly scheduled conferences and seminars, during which they will be able to improve their presentation skills and gain experience analyzing data and presenting to their peers and supervisors. Conferences will include journal club, morbidity and mortality and case presentations. We also have instituted “journal watch conference” in which fellows review all major journals in our specialty on a rotating basis to ensure excellent handling in critically appraising the literature and fostering self-learning even beyond their three years of training. 

Fellows have the opportunity to participate in our ongoing clinical trials and quality improvement projects and receive guidance and supervision in their own clinical research projects.

Additional information

• Call schedule: There is no overnight, in-house or home call during fellowship unless desired by the trainee. Week call is once a week until 10 p.m. while on certain rotations, such as intensive care unit (ICU) and pulmonary consultation service.
• Tele-ICU: Optional experience during third year of fellowship.  
• Financial support and schedule flexibility for participation in national meetings such as of the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Thoracic Society.
• Fellows have the opportunity to do a significant amount of bronchoscopies. As an example, during their first year, each of our fellows had performed more than 50 procedures in the first four months of fellowship.