Research and Scholarly Activity

The scientific environment at Boston Children’s Hospital is highly conducive to fostering successful physician-scientists. As a 395-bed pediatric academic medical center that provides tertiary care to the children of Boston and across the globe, the research mission of Children's encompasses basic research, clinical research, community research programs and the postdoctoral training of new scientists, including 9 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 on-staff members of the Institute of Medicine and 9 members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Children's current initiatives are supported by a record US $225 million in annual funding, which includes more federal funding than is awarded to any other pediatric facility.

 The Division of Critical Care Medicine is an essential and vibrant component of this research environment. The Division faculty members have over 5000 square feet of bench support for basic science research. In addition, the critical care service encompasses 41 beds in the medical and surgical intensive care units (not including cardiac and neonatal intensive care units) that together admit over 2,500 patients per year, representing a high volume of patients with diverse diagnoses, an ideal clinical setting to conduct patient-oriented research. The Division of Critical Care employs twenty-three full-time faculty, including two endowed Chairs in Critical Care, three Professors and seven Associate Professors, and for the past academic year had over $5 million dollars in federal grant support, including three senior faculty with RO1 support, as well as three with over 5 million dollars in foundation support. The division holds weekly conferences to discuss clinical cases, as well as monthly research conferences to both review pending clinical protocols and discuss the faculty research projects. Formal scientific review of research protocols are conducted by the Division’s senior faculty.

Our fellowship is an academically oriented fellowship and contributions to the advancement of the field of Critical Care Medicine are expected of each fellow. Research time in the first year is designed for fellows to explore and determine an overarching research focus. In the second and third years, fellows receive ongoing clinical experience with extensive research exposure to develop their research interests. Current research activities within the fellowship range from the scholarly delineation of ethical issues to clinical trials to laboratory investigations of genetic susceptibility to disease, pulmonary hypertension, and Gram-negative lung infections. Fellows are expected to present their research locally and nationally.

Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School and affiliated hospitals have a uniquely diverse and abundant offering of research related resources, including courses and seminars in which we encourage fellows to participate.  Below are relevant links and a list of courses that many of our past and current fellows have taken advantage of.

Harvard Catalyst- The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center

Boston Children’s Hospital Clinical Research Center (CRC)

EQuIP- Education and Quality Improvement Program

Institutional Review Board (IRB)

Boston Children’s Hospital Office of Fellowship Training, OFT

Simulator Program

Harvard Extension School

Advanced Training/ Fellowship Opportunities

The following programs are available to further enhance the training of fellows in education, clinical and translational clinical research. All training requests must be formally approved by the Division Chief to determine whether this formal education is appropriate for advancing the fellow’s academic training. (See table below)

 In addition to the numerous resources available above, the fellows are formally offered education and experience in administration, management and teaching.  Specifically, all of our third year fellows hold an administrative role within the fellowship program. This all in to prepare our fellow trainees for a successful career in academic medicine.