National survey of pediatric critical care medicine fellowship clinical and research time allocation*

OBJECTIVE: Pediatric critical care medicine (PCCM) fellowship programs vary in the number of fellows per program and experiences offered. We evaluated whether program size and rotation distribution affect clinical and research time allocation. DESIGN: : We surveyed directors of all Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education-accredited PCCM training programs in 2006. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Forty-six of 60 (77%) responded. Twenty-seven programs (59%) have dedicated cardiac intensive care unit rotations (median 4 months, range 1-9). Median research time is 18 months (range 12-24). Median intensive care unit (ICU) clinical time over 3 years is 14 months (interquartile range 12.5-18). Programs with dedicated cardiac intensive care unit rotations have more total ICU time (16 months vs. 13 months, p = 0.0006), but not less research time (17.5 months vs. 18 months, p = 0.1), indicating fewer non-ICU experiences. Larger programs were less likely to have night call during research time and more likely to have in-hospital fellow call, but otherwise program size did not affect clinical time allocation. CONCLUSIONS: Data on clinical and research time allocation of U.S. PCCM fellowships can help program directors benchmark their program training time and content. Fellowship size and unit structure do not influence overall allocation of clinical and research time or night call, but impact the number of non-ICU rotations and elective exposures.