Critical Care Anesthesia Fellowship

Overview

Massachusetts General Hospital’s Critical Care Anesthesia Fellowship is a 12-month Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited training program, open to eight fellows, that offers extensive clinical training and educational experiences designed to provide each fellow with the opportunity to fulfill the requirements of the American Board of Anesthesiology (ABA) for subspecialty certification in critical care and to achieve competence in the specialty. Our goal is to provide our fellows with the best possible training experience to become world-class intensivists and leaders in the field of critical care.

Fellows spend at least nine months providing care to patients in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and supervising residents and medical students under the direction of the critical care attending staff.

The fellowship in critical care medicine is based in the multidisciplinary ICUs at Mass General:

• Ellison 4 is a multidisciplinary 20-bed ICU that admits a wide variety of surgical patients—including postoperative complex vascular, thoracic, orthopedic, general surgery and trauma patients—as well as medical and obstetric patients
• Blake 12 and Ellison 14 are multidisciplinary ICUs with a total combined 27-bed capacity caring for medical, burns, transplant and other complex surgical patients

Our fellows also spend up to two months in the high-acuity, multidisciplinary, 20-bed cardiovascular surgical ICU caring for a wide range of patients recovering from surgical and interventional cardiac procedures including:

• Aortic dissection repairs
• Coronary artery bypass grafting
• Heart and lung transplantations
• Repair of adult congenital heart lesions
• Valve replacement.
• Mechanical circulatory support (ventricular assist devices, ECMO)

Our ICUs are based on a collaboration model where the ICU team spearheads the care of our critically ill patients with shared decision-making from all involved services and specialties. The critical care service has full responsibility of the care of each patient, which is carried out by anesthesia, emergency medicine and surgical residents. Residents are directly supervised by the critical care fellows who, in turn, are supervised by dedicated critical care attendings.

During the three months of fellowship that are not spent in the ICUs, the fellows have a wide range of elective choices including advanced clinical rotations, clinical or basic science research, education or quality improvement projects or subspecialty rotations (e.g., advanced echocardiography).

Requirements

This 12-month program begins after successful completion of an ACGME-accredited anesthesiology or surgical residency program.

The Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine (DACCPM) at Mass General follows all minimum selection criteria as delineated in the Institutional Policy on Selection (PDF).

As a prerequisite for entry, all applicants for the fellowship must be a graduate of one of the following:

• American Osteopathic Association (AOA)-accredited medical school
• Medical school listed in the World Health Organization Directory of Medical Schools
• Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME)-accredited medical school
• USMLE completion requirement for clinical trainees (PDF)

Applicants must have also completed one of the following:

• An ACGME-accredited or AOA-approved residency or in an RCPSC-accredited or CFPC-accredited residency program located in Canada
• The ACGME-accredited Critical Care Anesthesia Fellowship is a 12-month program begun after successful completion of an ACGME-accredited or AOA-approved residency program. Prior to appointment to the program, fellows must have completed an acceptable residency described in anesthesiology or emergency medicine*; or at least three clinical years in an acceptable residency in: neurological surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, orthopaedic surgery, otolaryngology, surgery, thoracic surgery, vascular surgery or urology. Please check your specialty board for certification information

* Although emergency medicine physicians are eligible to apply to the program, this program is not approved for a two-year fellowship experience that leads to board certification in critical care medicine

Visa Information

All residents, clinical fellows, research fellows and staff who are not United States citizens and do not have a green card must have the appropriate visa in order to receive a Mass General appointment.

If you have visa questions, please visit Mass General Brigham's Office for Global Professionals and Scholars website (GPS) or call 857-282-8211.

Curriculum

Mass General’s Critical Care Anesthesia Fellowship is a 12-month training program that provides core experience in multidisciplinary medical, surgical and cardiac ICUs. The program offers a wide variety of clinical electives, didactics and research opportunities. All fellows complete the requirements for certification by the American Board of Anesthesiology (ABA). Our graduates have been successful in securing staff positions in critical care medicine in academic and private practice settings across the United States and in other areas of the world.

Didactic Curriculum

A diverse group of guest lecturers are invited each year to speak to fellows on core topics that are important in managing critical care patients in the ICU. The Fellows' Lecture Series aligns with the recommendations of the ACGME, Society of Critical Care Medicine and the ABA for critical care medicine education. The ICU Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) meetings actively involve fellows’ participation in quality assurance and quality improvement initiatives. The program director also offers a series of lectures to prepare fellows for the critical care board certification exams.

Fellows benefit from a robust, multidisciplinary didactic schedule that includes:

• Anesthesia Grand Rounds
• Ethics Rounds
• Fellows' Lecture Series
• M&M Rounds
• Respiratory Rounds
• Fellows’ Journal Club
• Trauma Conference and Trauma Rounds
• Ultrasound Curriculum

Core Curriculum

The core curriculum of the fellowship covers all of the major aspects of the art and science of critical care. Fellows encounter the entire spectrum of critical care patients, working in multiple ICUs with a wealth of clinical material. Fellows gain experience and training in the following areas:

• Biostatistics and experimental design
• Cardio-respiratory resuscitation
• Critical obstetric and gynecologic disorders
• Ethical and legal aspects of critical care
• Gastrointestinal disorders
• Hematologic and coagulation disorders
• Infectious diseases
• Monitoring and medical instrumentation
• Neurological impairment
• Pharmacokinetics and dynamics of drug metabolism and excretion in critical illness
• Principles and techniques of administration and management
• Renal failure
• Respiratory failure
• Trauma, thermal, electrical and radiation injury
• Ultrasound

Specific electives may be structured by the fellow, under the supervision of the fellowship director, to suit the fellow's particular academic interests and needs. Examples of common elective choices are:

• Blood bank/laboratory medicine
• Burn ICU
• Echocardiography
• Hyperbaric medicine
• Infectious disease
• Nephrology
• Neuroscience intensive care
• Pediatric intensive care medicine
• Research and academic projects

Clinical Experience

Fellows take an active role in teaching, conducting rounds and participating in research projects. Fellows supervise the residents in all aspects of ICU patient care and are, in turn, supervised by ICU attendings. Each morning, the fellow coordinates activities and plans with the surgical teams and consultants and conducts morning ICU work and teaching rounds together with the staff physician. The balance of the fellows’ workday is spent providing care to the patients in the unit, performing and supervising procedures, assessing and triaging patients outside of the ICU, attending didactic session and doing his/her own reading and research.

Each fellow participates in a night shift system scheduled in one-week blocks throughout the year, supervising the care provided by the ICU residents who provide overnight care. In-house ICU attendings serve as resources for the fellows 24/7. The fellow is on duty for the unit an average of one weekend per month.

The fellow serves as leader of the Emergency Airway Consult Service team, which provides urgent/emergent airway management for patients throughout the hospital. The team leader also performs elective intubations, invasive procedures and consultations.

Research Experience

Basic and clinical research is an important ongoing activity and an integral component of the mission at Mass General. More than 80% of fellows choose to pursue an academic career at the conclusion of their fellowship. Examples of recent research projects conducted by our faculty include:

• Basic science studies and interventional clinical research in sepsis, shock and ARDS
• Novel devices engineering, drug testing and non-pharmacological approached to prevent ventilator-assisted pneumonia
• Lung-heart physiological descriptive studies
• Point of care ultrasound
• Emergency airway management

How to Apply

Selection to the fellowship is highly competitive. Only completed applications are reviewed. The deadline for completed applications is March 1, 2025 for the 2026-2027 academic year. Interviews will be conducted from March to May.

Complete the SF Match Application. Please submit the following documents electronically to: mghanesfellowapps@partners.org:

• A copy of your medical school transcript
• A current curriculum vitae. Please use exact dates for education in MM/DD/YYYY format

Documents should be submitted electronically with the following naming convention (first five letters of last name, first initial, document type) For example:

• Claus_S_CV
• Claus_S_MST

Application Process

All documents should be submitted electronically to mghanesfellowapps@partners.org to the attention of:

Edward A. Bittner, MD, PhD, fellowship director
c/o Tina Toland, program manager
Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital

SF Match

The Mass General Critical Care Anesthesia Fellowship is participating in the SF Match. Registration for the 2026-2027 academic year opens on November 4, 2024. SF Match target application deadline is February 5, 2025. Match Day is May 27, 2025.