ME-409 Critical Care Medicine

Director: Bogdan Tiru, MD

Location: Baystate Medical Center, 759 Chestnut Street, Springfield, MA

Goals

This elective provides an in depth educational opportunity in the multiple aspects of critical care medicine including:

• cardiopulmonary resuscitation
• physiology, pathophysiology, diagnoses, and therapy of disorders of the cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, renal, neurologic, endocrine, infectious disease and immune systems, metabolic, nutritional and endocrine effects of critical illness
• hematologic and coagulation disorders
• monitoring and medical instrumentation
• pharmacokinetics and dynamics of drug metabolism and excretion in critical illness
• thermal/electrical injuries
• sedation, pain management, and neuromuscular blockade
• ethical/legal aspects in critical care medicine

Objectives

The student will learn...

• an approach to disease states utilizing a systemic physiologically-oriented approach.
• how to combine traditional clinical assessment with more recently defined methods of monitoring.
• the limitations and pitfalls of invasive and non-invasive monitoring.
• how to integrate clinical exam, monitoring information, and laboratory data to provide optimal and cost effective patient care while minimizing risks of such care.
• how to deal with hopelessly ill patients and their loved ones.
• the anatomy of the neck including central venous system, peripheral arterial tree, heart, and lungs.
• the indications and risk/benefit assessments for invasive monitoring.
• the complications of invasive monitoring, appreciation of the approaches and techniques necessary to minimize their occurrence, and recognition of their presence and appropriate intervention
• to recognize artifact of monitoring clinical circumstances under which data may be misleading and/or difficult to obtain.

If you would like to apply for this elective, please refer to Application Process.