Research

Critical Care Fellowship The program is structured such that each trainee has a supervised research experience. During the first year of training, the trainees will receive several didactic lectures on experimental design and data collection and analysis. They will also observe and participate in current research projects so they will learn the necessary laboratory techniques. They will have 3 months of protected research time in the first year, 7 months in the second year, and 8 months in the third year, for a total of 18 months of protected research experience. They will also attend a mandatory statistics course in their first year that will include lectures on experimental design. In addition to these teaching efforts, each trainee will be assigned or allowed to choose a research mentor. The mentor will be one of the critical care faculty members or Dr. Thomas Shaffer, who has agreed to work with our trainees. The mentors will follow the progress of the trainees and closely supervise the research process from hypothesis through experimental design, use of laboratory methods, data collection, analysis, and presentation, and finally to abstract/poster presentation and manuscript preparation. The mentors will meet with the trainees for at least one hour each week during the research months. The program director will meet with each trainee every three months to monitor progress on research efforts. In addition, trainees will report on their progress in the monthly departmental research meetings.

The A.I. duPont Life Science Center has current AAALAC approval and houses the research facilities for the A.I. duPont Hospital for Children. It is physically attached to the hospital via an indoor walkway and has the necessary facilities to house both large and small animals. Our division has a research laboratory within the Life Science Center. It is fully equipped with all necessary equipment, including invasive catheters, mechanical ventilators and respiratory monitoring equipment, intubation and tracheostomy equipment, and hemodynamic monitoring equipment. Many hospital and research departments have laboratory space within this building and collaboration and borrowing of necessary equipment is easy and common. In addition, a veterinarian, Dr. Joseph Tuckosh, is employed full-time and is available for assistance with all animal studies.

In addition to this laboratory, the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Shaffer will be available. This laboratory has 2500 sq. ft. of laboratory space and is supported by two NIH grants and four Foundation/biotech/industrial grants. The labs are currently equipped with PFT equipment, hemodynamic flow transducers, critical care monitors, data recording instruments, computers, image analysis equipment, and cell and muscle bath setups. There is the capability of running in vivo studies with rats, rabbits, newborn lambs, weanling lambs, and adult sheep.