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| Anthony J. Dean, MD Fellowship Director |
Nova Panebianco, MD Fellowship Associate Director |
The goals of EUS fellowship training are at least threefold. The first is didactic: emergency physicians need to be highly skilled not just as practitioners but as trainers of emergency ultrasound. The second is scientific: with new and established ultrasound applications in a state of dynamic evolution, scientific investigations are needed to guide our forward progress. The third is leadership. In both residency and community settings, EDs need members with special expertise to teach and oversee administrative aspects of this new technology in the practice of emergency medicine. Through our experience in the evolution of emergency ultrasound over the past 15+ years, our fellows can gain familiarity with some of the adversities and pitfalls, and thereby gain familiarity with the administrative and political issues of ultrasound in our specialty.
The Penn fellowship program offers one- and two-year positions. The Penn one-year EMBU fellowship includes the opportunity to undertake the coursework for a certificate from the University's Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. The coursework for this certificate includes most of the 'guts' of the master's program [details]. Exercising this option incurs significant extra work-load, but fellows who have done so have felt that it has greatly enhanced their understanding of research methodology, design, and implementation.
The two-year program includes coursework and, upon completion, a Master’s Degree. To this point, fellows have been elected to pursue either the Masters program in Epidemiology and Biostatistics or the Masters program in Healthcare Policy.
There are several compelling reasons to consider the 2-year fellowship option.
- With the proliferation of fellowships, it will be increasingly difficult for fellowship graduates to find teaching positions in academic EM programs. A secondary degree combined with additional skills in research design, data management, statistical analysis, healthcare policy, and administration are likely to give graduates from this program a significant edge in this job market.
- Both EM in general and the subspecialty of emergency ultrasonography will benefit from a cadre of highly trained researchers for future scholarship.
- A special focus on research training is uniquely suited to the extraordinary faculty group, research and academic environment in the current Penn emergency department.
- It is difficult to accomplish the performance, teaching, and research goals of the ultrasound fellowship in 12 months, especially with concurrent and competing life-tasks which may include relocation (into and possibly out of Philadelphia), EM boards, family responsibilities, and job searches. The 2-year fellowship provides the opportunity for intense mentorship in research, a greater number of projects, projects of a larger, more impactful scale, and more extensive training in ultrasonography, including training in transesophageal echocardiography.
Those interested in either the one-year or two-year ultrasonography fellowship at Penn are referred to the Emergency Ultrasound Fellowship website: http://www.eusfellowships.com/.
