Emergency Medicine

Dedicated to providing world-class emergency care.

Fellowship

The Division provides an ACGME-accredited three-year fellowship program under the direction of Paul Ishimine, M.D. There are only four other pediatric emergency medicine fellowship programs in California, and as there is a shortage of pediatric emergency medicine physicians across the country, training future specialists is one of our top priorities.

The PEM fellowship started in 1995 and accepts graduates from both pediatric and emergency medicine residency programs. The bulk of PEM fellows’ clinical care time is spent within Rady Children’s ED.

The Hospital’s annual ED census is approximately 71,000 visits per year with all levels of acuity. Renovations of the main ED were completed in 2008; the main ED has two trauma/resuscitation bays, one critical care/isolation room, three procedure beds, six monitored beds, and 10 general-purpose beds. Additionally, lower-acuity ED patients are seen in an adjacent care area staffed by PEM faculty. (The pediatric EM fellows do not rotate on the lower-acuity section of the ED.) The ED is paperless, utilizing an integrated computerized charting, tracking and ordering system.

The main ED is staffed entirely by board-certified, fellowship-trained pediatric emergency physicians. As Rady Children’s is the only dedicated pediatric hospital for a wide catchment area, the ED sees a wide variety of pathology and sees patients across the entire socioeconomic spectrum. There is a full complement of pediatric subspecialists.

Our Level I Pediatric Trauma Center sees more than 1,000 patients each year. All trauma activation patients are seen in the ED by a team consisting of emergency physicians, trauma surgeons and intensivists. There is a dedicated ultrasound machine for emergency department use.

Rady Children’s is the primary pediatric teaching institution for the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. Medical students and pediatric, emergency medicine, and family medicine residents from several different training programs rotate through the Rady Children’s ED. Pediatric emergency medicine fellows supervise these trainees in a graduated fashion.

Additionally, the fellowship takes advantage of the other major training programs in San Diego, including rotations in trauma surgery and general emergency medicine at Scripps Mercy Hospital, a high-acuity, urban, Level I trauma center; general emergency medicine, neonatal intensive care unit and pediatric intensive care unit rotations at the Naval Medical Center, San Diego, one of the largest military medical facilities in the United States; and general emergency medicine, emergency medical services (EMS) ultrasound, toxicology, and burn rotations with the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center, one of the nation’s premier emergency medicine training programs.

The fellowship program is sponsored by the Department of Emergency Medicine at the UC San Diego Medical Center. However, the fellowship works closely with the UC San Diego Department of Pediatrics as well. We have a two-year training program for emergency medicine residency graduates and a three-year program for pediatric residency graduates. We have been fortunate to attract fellows from both types of residency training, and our faculty includes pediatric emergency physicians with backgrounds in both pediatrics and emergency medicine. We take one to two fellows a year. The PEM fellowship training program was reviewed and reaccredited for the maximum five-year cycle by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in February 2009.

We are happy that you are interested in the PEM fellowship at Rady Children’s. We participate in ERAS and only accept applications through this route. We wish you the best of luck.