Emergency Medical Services Fellowship

Fellows will participate in weekly didactics in EMS (on average 3 hours per week) with either one-on-one faculty time (topic specific) or off-site group activity (administrative). Some of the didactics will be covered in outside venues: medical direction course by NAEMSP, ICS training at the Maryland Fire Academy, Emergency Medical Dispatch Training through a course with Pro-QA as well as participation and development of a dispatch system, and wilderness curriculum will be done in conjunction with the Wilderness fellowship here at VTC/Carilion. There is dedicated research time and mentorship in developing a quality EMS project that will be presented at the end of the year. Fellows will participate in research projects that are in currently in progress.

Fellows will be provided the two volume NAEMSP textbook set, Clinical Aspects of Prehospital Medicine, Medical Oversight of EMS, Evaluating and Improving Quality in EMS and Special Operations Medical Support. Fellows will have paid memberships to SAEM, ACEP and NAEMSP. We encourage fellows to attend the medical direction course at the NAEMSP annual meeting.

Fellows have access to AccessEM and SurgeryEM, a comprehensive learning suite of many EM and Critical Care textbooks and other learning resources; and ChallengerEM, a comprehensive board review question bank. Fellows have access to a full suite of online learning resources through Carilion Clinic, including comprehensive online journal access to all known medical journals. Fellows also have full access to the Virginia Tech main campus for educational resources.

Fellows will train and teach at the Roanoke Valley Regional Fire-EMS Training Center; the Carilion Clinic Center for Simulation, Research and Patient Safety; and the Radford University Carilion (RUC) Clinical Simulation Centers (owned by Carilion Clinic) as part of their EMS education. They will be required to develop and deliver EMS education to the RUC EMS programs.

In addition to participating in their own educational curriculum, fellows will also develop educational curriculum for EM residents during their fellowship. The EMS fellowship curriculum is scheduled in block time to deliver didactic content to the residents in small-group and large-group format at least twice a year. Each fellow will meet with the program director twice yearly at minimum to discuss curriculum development and content coverage. Each fellow will have an educational mentor selected from the education faculty of the residency program to shape their development as educators during their fellowship. Each fellow will serve in an educational role for the EM residency as an educational site director for the EM residency program's longitudinal EMS experience, a three-year curriculum combing rural and urban EMS field experiences, and EMS teaching and leadership experiences.

Tracks

The year is devoted to learning the approach to management of common EM patient presentations, as well as developing efficiencies in managing several patients, procedural skills and advancing to managing progressively more complex patients. Fellows will have multiple rotations throughout the year, combing EMS field experiences; quality and education experiences; and disaster response and medical direction of multiple agencies, including Life-Guard, Carilion Clinic Patient Transport's aeromedical transport, and Neo-Peds, CCPT's pediatric critical care transport.

As the fellows gain more clinical experience, didactic knowledge and proficiency in procedural skills, they will be allowed more clinical responsibility under less direct faculty supervision and become more involved in the didactic and administrative aspects in the field.  Fellows will have at least two leadership experiences at large EMS systems, serving as associate medical directors during their year, including leadership experiences in quality improvement, operations, protocol development and budget planning.