About the Division
With a growing team of dedicated faculty, the Division of Critical Care looks to serve the children in the state of Virginia and beyond with exceptional high quality and collaborative critical care anchored by education and research that is unrivaled.
Our team provides 24/7 in-house care for over 1,000 patients annually. Our unit resides in the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU (CHoR) inpatient tower, which houses the largest pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) in Virginia with 24 beds.
Using a family-centered, collaborative approach in state-of-the-art pediatric facilities, we treat the sickest infants and children who are hospitalized for a broad range of life-threatening illnesses that include (but not limited to):
- Cardiovascular disease and congenital heart surgery
- Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation
- Neurocritical care
- Pediatric trauma and post-operative surgical care
- Acute respiratory failure requiring invasive mechanical ventilation (including high-frequency oscillatory ventilation)
- Endocrine and metabolism conditions
- Fluid, electrolyte and renal diseases
- Gastrointestinal conditions
- Infectious diseases (including septic shock)
- Neuromuscular conditions
- Poisoning and environmental injuries
Education
Medical Students
Medical students rotate through the inpatient floors during their M3 clerkship and M4 acting internship. Students learn alongside residents and get face-to-face feedback from the Critical Care Medicine Attending or Fellow.
We also facilitate simulation sessions for students, which allows them to gain practical experience and confidence in handling the first five minutes of an emergency before the critical care team arrives.
Residents
Pediatric residents can expect to take care of the sickest patients in the Greater Richmond Region during their PGY-2 and PGY-3 rotations through the PICU. In addition to extensive critical care training and bedside teaching, trainees receive regular feedback from Attendings and Fellows.
Designed to foster individual interests, the pediatrics residency curriculum includes elective rotations each year, with the opportunity to choose critical care as a subspecialty track.
Fellows
For more than 30 years, our three-year fellowship program has trained physicians to treat and manage life-threatening illnesses in critically ill children, address difficult ethical questions in patient care, conduct scientific research and practice teaching skills for learners at all levels.
Accredited by the ACGME, this fellowship participates in the National Residency Match Program for pediatric critical care medicine.
Research
As academic physicians, we are proud to contribute to the field of pediatric critical beyond the scope of our own division by engaging in innovative bench and clinical research. Our faculty are involved in aspects of bench, translation, clinical, and quality research locally and internationally to support endeavors to expand care for children. Our clinical research covers a broad range of areas, such as (but not limited to):
- Transfusion medicine
- Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation
- Traumatic brain injury
- Respiratory failure
- Effects of noise and light in the ICU
- Parental stress related to consenting to procedures
- Neurocritical care
We also maintain active involvement and leadership roles in national and international collaborative research groups, including the Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network, the Pediatric Neurocritical Care Research Group and the Pediatric Acute Lung Injury and Sepsis Investigators Network.
Meet the Team
Get to know about our critical care faculty by visiting their bios on the Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU website, linked below: