Goals and Objectives

The goal of our Neurocritical Care Fellowship is to offer a comprehensive training platform, preparing neurologists and other physicians to practice as neuro-intensivists. Additionally, we aim to provide robust vascular neurology training for working in a high-intensity, high-volume stroke center. Our environment includes a diverse range of ICUs, such as Medical ICU, Surgical ICU, and others, ensuring a variety of cases for expert neurocritical care consultations. This training involves supervised clinical work, with increasing patient care responsibility throughout the program.

Key objectives of our fellowship program include:

• Identifying and treating patients with acute neurological emergencies.
• Managing all ICU patients with primary neurological problems.
• Training to become an expert in treating diverse critical neurological disorders.
• Understanding the principles of general critical care medicine.
• Collaborating with neurosurgical teams to co-manage patients.
• Developing skills for critical care procedures, including intracranial pressure monitors, lumbar punctures, insertion of lumbar drains, bronchoscopy, vascular access, upper airway management, and point-of-care ultrasound.
• Actively managing/weaning external ventricular drains and gaining proficiency in administering intraventricular medications.
• Engaging in multimodality neuromonitoring, including continuous EEG, ICP monitoring, brain parenchymal oxygen tension monitoring, and performing/interpreting transcranial dopplers.
• Learning to triage patients based on critical needs.
• Acquiring skills to lead a multidisciplinary team, comprised of medical students, interns, neurology and neurosurgery residents, emergency medicine residents, medical and surgical ICU fellows, radiology, and pharmacy students/residents.
• Developing leadership qualities to discuss complicated critical care issues with various specialties involved in patient management.
• Understanding the basics of literature review and participating in clinical research.
• Recognizing the importance of devastating neurological injuries managed in the Neuro ICU and developing communication skills for compassionate patient and family interactions regarding disability, quality of life, and end-of-life discussions.