While emergency rooms have been around for decades, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education only recognized critical care as a subspecialty of emergency medicine education in 2011. Since then, more and more emergency medicine (EM) graduates have been seeking critical care fellowship training. Graduates of these fellowships have entered emergency departments and inpatient practice settings.
The Mount Sinai Division of Emergency Critical Care contains many critical care fellowship-trained emergency physicians with specialized education in medical, anesthesia/surgical, and neuro-critical care. The Division staffs rapid response teams as well as neuro, medical, surgical trauma, coronary care, and cardiac surgical intensive care units (ICUs) at several locations in the health system. We are committed to increasing the visibility and recognition of emergency critical care as its own specialty. Plans for a five-year combined Emergency Medicine-Critical Care Medicine fellowship are currently underway.
Fellows in our existing programs can participate in high quality and longstanding critical care facilities at both The Mount Sinai Hospital and Elmhurst Hospital Center. Elmhurst Hospital, one of the oldest municipal institutions in New York City, is a Level 1 trauma center with a Mount Sinai affiliation dating back to the early 1960s. It is home to Elmhurst Shock and Trauma Service and the Elmhurst Multi-professional ICU, one of the first trauma ICUs on the East Coast as well as the Resuscitation and Critical Care (RACC) unit, a hybrid emergency critical care unit designed for the rapid stabilization of emergency medical and trauma patients. RACC can also provide of intensive long-term care. Similarly, the Resuscitation Unit in the Mount Sinai Hospital Emergency Department provides high level critical care in a large tertiary care center. A variety of ICUs at both Mount Sinai and Elmhurst provide inpatient critical care core education as well as elective opportunities for emergency medicine residents.
The Division of Emergency Critical Care is committed to resident, fellow, and medical student critical care education through didactics and bedside teaching. We offer a comprehensive two-year critical care curriculum and a year-round critical care and trauma lecture series. In addition, we strive to improve care by development of clinical guidelines and performing important critical care research in both emergency department and inpatient settings. Current research studies include:
- Prevalence of novel anticoagulant use in trauma patients
- Use of early vasopressors vs. crystalloid in treating hypovolemic shock
- Use of simulation in critical care education
- Various retrospective studies examining interventions and outcomes in the setting of the COVID-19 pandemic.