UT Southwestern Medical Center and Parkland Memorial Hospital have a long history in the field of trauma and surgical critical care and offer a strong ACGME-accredited program designed to successfully prepare candidates to sit for the Surgical Critical Care Examination offered by the American Board of Surgery (ABS). Since the program started in 1994, we have a 100 percent first-time pass rate for this exam.

Parkland is an ACS verified Level 1 Trauma Center and had just under 8,000 traumas last year with 3,200 admissions. Our SICU service provides critical care for the trauma, emergency general, elective general, ENT, OMFS, Ob/Gyn, and orthopaedic surgery services (about 1,200 patients per year).

As a routine part of our program, we offer our fellows the opportunity to run the Trauma/Emergency General Surgery (EGS) Service for two months to hone their expertise at running trauma resuscitations and to provide trauma and emergency general surgery operative experience.

We offer a burn track and are also the only dedicated burn center for Northern Texas and Southern Oklahoma. The Division of Burn, Trauma, Acute and Critical Care Surgery has a strong commitment to research with both basic science and clinical projects that provide ample opportunities for candidates to pursue academic interests. We have one-year and two-year tracks that can be tailored to address the specific interests of each candidate.

The first-year curriculum, successful completion of SCC or SCC/burn track, qualifies the fellow to take the ABS Surgical Critical Care Examination.

Other potential electives include MICU, CCU, PICU, Neurosurgery NCC, Ortho, Pulmonary, CTICU, and Transplant Surgery.

The second year fellow advances to a Clinical Instructor position and is assigned institutional privileges. The fellow will function at the level of a junior attending with complete autonomy for a defined period of 12 months. On the assigned rotations (within the Division of Burn, Trauma, Acute and Critical Care Surgery) the Clinical Instructor takes on the role of primary surgeon for the service and is paired with a more senior faculty member who will provide mentorship and function as a source of around-the-clock backup should technical or judgmental assistance be desired on the part of the Clinical Instructor. On the other rotations, the Clinical Instructor functions as a fellow (trainee).

Other electives are potentially available and will be arranged to address other desired areas of focus.

We have excellent faculty who are dedicated to teaching future surgeons and encourage any resident who is considering a fellowship in Surgical Critical Care to apply to our Program.