Pediatric Fellowship

The Emory University Pediatric Anesthesiology Fellowship at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Arthur M. Blank Hospital is a 1-year, ACGME-accredited core fellowship program. We are one of the busiest and highest acuity Children’s hospitals in the United States, offering comprehensive pediatric training that spans from ambulatory anesthetics to more intricate procedures such as emergency interventions on extremely preterm babies, pediatric abdominal transplants, and congenital cardiac surgery. The entire fellowship year will be spent at our new hospital building, which was completed in 2024. The Arthur M. Blank Children’s Hospital (AMB) is a 19-story, 2 million-square-foot facility with 446 beds. We have 37 anesthetizing locations at AMB staffed by 38 pediatric anesthesiologists and 50 anesthetists. We are Georgia’s only Level 1 pediatric trauma center and level IV NICU, receiving the highest acuity referrals from all over the southeast. We are one of the busiest pediatric abdominal transplant (liver and kidney) and heart centers in the country, caring for the entire spectrum of congenital heart disease. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta performs ~45,000 anesthetics each year and our highest acuity cases go to our fellows. Our goal as clinicians, researchers, and educators is to provide our fellows unparalleled clinical training and robust didactics so that they graduate with the knowledge and technical skills of experienced, world-class pediatric anesthesiologists. Our graduates not only excel in both academic and private practice settings but also emerge as global leaders in academia, teaching, and professional leadership.

All Emory Pediatric Anesthesiology faculty have Emory University academic appointments. There are 38 faculty members, all of whom participate in didactic and clinical teaching. 

Meet the Emory Pediatric Anesthesiology faculty members. 

Our fellowship is designed to provide fellows the opportunity to develop unparalleled excellence in clinical care, judgment, technical skills, teaching, and research. Our highest priority and emphasis is the clinical care of the most critically ill children. We have the privilege of offering one of the highest acuity training environments in the country and are certain that this uniquely positions our graduating fellows with incredible abilities and confidence.

We believe that pediatric anesthesiology fellows make a large sacrifice to pursue pediatric fellowship training. We value their commitment to children and strive to give them the very best experience possible – one which they greatly deserve! We therefore carefully design our fellowship completely around the best interest of our fellows.

We value our fellows as our highest priority learners and not as necessary OR staff. In order to maximize the learning opportunities provided by high acuity, weekday scheduling, our fellows do not take ANY weekday call during their 6 months on our general anesthesiology service. Between moving cities, navigating a new hospital system, studying for the applied exam, and learning the most evidence-based knowledge and skills of pediatric anesthesiology, fellowship year is quite busy! Thus, in order to provide our fellows with an ideal work-life balance during their full year, we also significantly restrict weekend calls. Our fellows spend significant time in the attending role late in fellowship to make the transition to attending seamless within the anesthesia-care-team model. Most importantly, we have purposely kept our fellowship significantly smaller than our volume could easily support in order to maximize our fellows’ experience: For 11 months of the year, there are only 1-2 fellows on our general rotation allowing them to choose their case for the next day out of a very large variety of clinical complexity and case type (30 general anesthetizing locations) to fit their learning needs.

Our fellows’ clinical year is based on a 12-month block schedule:

6 months – General Pediatric Anesthesiology (All non-cardiac ORs and off-site anesthetizing locations)

Exposure to the full spectrum of cases including general surgery, neonatal emergencies, abdominal transplantation, orthopedics, neurosurgery, otolaryngology, craniofacial, ophthalmology, urology, trauma and off-site CT, MRI, radiation therapy, and interventional radiology.

2 months – Pediatric Cardiac Anesthesiology (consecutive)

We are one of the 5 busiest pediatric heart centers in the country. We perform more than 600 operations with cardiopulmonary bypass and an additional 200 cardiac surgical procedures without CPB each year. We also care for ~1200 patients who require cardiac cath procedures each year, and ~200 patients needing cardiac MRI/CT scans. We routinely anesthetize preterm infants weighing 500-800 grams for PDA device closure in our cath lab. Importantly for our fellows, the cardiac anesthesiology team performs all arterial and central venous line placements periprocedurally in the heart center, and these procedures go to our fellows first. Those interested in a career as a pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist may consider a second year of fellowship in our ACGME-accredited pediatric cardiac anesthesiology fellowship.

2 months – Pediatric Regional Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine

The regional anesthesia and pain service is a dynamic, dedicated team of 6 pediatric anesthesiologists, 1 nurse practitioner, and a pain psychologist who collaboratively work to provide comprehensive and individualized pain solutions for our young patients. Our fellows are responsible for all blocks (peripheral nerve, epidurals, spinals) in the hospital and assist the attending and NP with acute and chronic pain consults on the wards. We have a very busy regional service and a growing pediatric spinal program for infants undergoing short urologic procedures amendable to spinal anesthesia. A special emphasis is placed on pediatric neuraxial and PCA dosing during daily inpatient rounds.

Though not required, if any of our fellows have a special interest in pediatric chronic pain, they are encouraged to join our attending pediatric pain anesthesiologists in our (on-campus) chronic pain clinic, which operates all 5 days of the week. 

1 month – Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care

Our fellows spend ~2 weeks in the NICU and ~2 weeks in the PICU. They immersively experience the complex care of critically ill children and neonates, which often involves complex respiratory care (e.g. HFOV) and ECMO. They collaborate closely with intensivists, nurses, and respiratory therapists to learn the management practices of both ICU’s, which facilitates seamless care transitions between their future ICU patients requiring perioperative care. As our fellows do not have call or direct patients care responsibilities during this rotation, they are free to fully invest in the educational programs and interdisciplinary collaboration this rotation provides.

1 month – Elective

Fellows choose how this month best serves their educational objectives. Options include: ‘acting’ attending, ambulatory anesthesia, high-risk preoperative clinic rotation (1 week), POCUS, transport, ECMO, PACU, and/or additional research.

Vacation – 20 days
Conferences – 5 days
Academic Non-clinical Time – At least 1 day per month

We want to emphasize that for all of us here at Children’s, this fellowship year is about you. We seek to provide you with the very best training and an extremely well balanced work-life during a year filled not only with learning pediatric anesthesiology, but most often also the oral boards, job searching, and family life. We encourage our fellows to take vacation whenever they desire (you can fly direct to pretty much anywhere in the world via ATL). We do not restrict them to any particular rotation or any number of consecutive vacation days. We value their time with us and want them to have as much flexibility as possible during their year.

In addition to our outstanding clinical training, we strengthen our fellows’ knowledge with high yield didactic lectures, seminars, and high-fidelity simulation.

• Daily morning lectures (August – October)
• Twice weekly morning lectures (November – July)
• American Society of Anesthesiologists Certification in POCUS
• Simulation
• Career Preparation
• Oral board Preparation (including mock OSCE)
• Journal Club (3:30-4:30pm once every other month)
• Difficult Case Conference (3:30-4:30pm once every other month)
• Research Opportunities (all our fellows present abstracts at SPA each year)
• International medicine - There are multiple opportunities for international medical mission work
  
  

The pediatric anesthesiology fellowship match has moved from NRMP to the SF Match starting in January 2024 for those applying to be pediatric fellows during the 25-26’ academic year. All 4 of our fellowship positions are through the SF Match Central Application Service (CAS). Applications open Monday, January 8th 2024. Match results will be June 25th, 2024. Training will begin August 2025. All interviews will be virtual. For candidates with special circumstances, start dates other than August can be arranged.

Pre-requisites include the successful completion of an ACGME-accredited anesthesiology residency program or Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada or College of Family Physicians Canada-accredited residency program and passing the USMLE or COMLEX examinations. Upon successful completion of the program, fellows can register for the Pediatric Anesthesiology certification examination offered by the American Board of Anesthesiology (ABA) and become ABA Board Certified Pediatric Anesthesiologists.

If you have any questions concerning your application, please contact our program coordinator, Teressa Williams or our program director, Michael Fiedorek, MD.

Teressa Williams
Pediatric Anesthesiology Fellowship Coordinator
Arthur M. Blank Hospital
2220 North Druid Hills Road NE
Atlanta, GA 30329
Office 404-785-6670
Fax 404-785-1362
teressa.williams@choa.org

Michael C. Fiedorek, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology
Program Director, Pediatric Anesthesiology Fellowship
Emory University School of Medicine
Pediatric Cardiac and Transplant Anesthesiologist
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta
michael.craig.fiedorek@emory.edu

A second-year fellowship is available in Pediatric Cardiac Anesthesiology. Please contact the program director, Stephanie Grant, MD, for more information.

Stephanie Grant, M.D.
Associate Professor of Anesthesiology
Program Director, Pediatric Cardiac Anesthesiology Fellowship
Emory University School of Medicine
Pediatric Cardiac Anesthesiologist
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
stephanie.grant@emory.edu