I took over as program director this year and,
and having gone through the training here and seen all the resources that were
available, I, I basically sat down and said from scratch,
if I could build the perfect critical care year, what would that look like?
Our fellows do very few nights, very few notes, very few menial tasks.
I mean, the majority of what they are doing is what they came here to do,
and that's training critical care. And that's what we've done.
When I did my research when applying for a fellowship,
there was a few things that were high on my list that I really appreciated.
One was the mentorship that I think Mayo provided every faculty member here,
they're readily available for all of the fellows and to help them gain the
courage and the confidence to accomplish whatever they would like to accomplish
down the line.
So many faculty are so eager to take us under their wing, um,
and we have so many opportunities, and the mentorship here is just phenomenal,
unlike anything I've ever seen.
The other thing I really enjoyed about the program when I was interviewing was
the curriculum. It's individualized in a sense of the electives,
the core rotations, and I think it hones in on your, not only your strengths,
but also your weaknesses to make you the best clinician that you could be down
the line.
The biggest surprise of the critical care medicine fellowship was the focus on
learning the art of critical care medicine. Here as the fellow,
your job is patient care,
doing the critical care medicine and focusing only on that.
The critical care fellowship is five fellows every year.
We purposefully keep it small like that, uh,
just so fellows can really get that individual experience that they're,
they're trying for. When I first came here as a fellow myself,
I was super nervous about it's Mayo Clinic, it's world famous.
Everybody there is super smart, and all of that is true, but at the same time,
everybody's very humble and down to earth and approachable.
The experiences here are unbelievable.
You couldn't even imagine that you would get to do or see some of the things
that occur here. And so as you go through the year,
you find yourself just constantly surprised at,
at how wrong you were about what the fellowship was gonna be like.
But in the best possible way, from a broad, high level view, that's,
that's probably the biggest thing is just how surprised fellows are with the
training they get here.
I do not believe that you're gonna find a program
that has a more diverse patient population to
learn from. If you have something that you want to pursue, if you are into,
uh, cardiovascular,
there's no aspect of that practice that we are not involved in.
And that's not just in cardiac, that is in all of the subspecialties.
We have. We have a nice breadth to our education where we, you know,
do some off service rotations with like interventional pulmonary,
with infectious disease, with nephrology,
in addition to a lot of core ICU experience. And I think, uh,
that's essential to making a, a really well-balanced, critical care physician.
I think that's also a unique aspect to the program.
Having these sub-specialized areas provides a unique experience.
Everyone brings something different to the table,
and you're not only thinking of in one traditional direction.
You're learning new ideas, new concepts, uh,
being innovative and trying to collaborate with teams that you have never been
exposed to before.
The variety of experiences you can get in your training,
not just here in Rochester,
but also taking advantage of our partnerships with Mayo, Scottsdale, Mayo,
Jacksonville.
We oftentimes have fellows who will do a month rotation down at one of the other
sites. And again, I think that speaks to the breadth of training that,
that we can provide.
There's so much to do in this small community. You're so close to state parks,
within 30 to 45 minutes you can be hiking in such a beautiful scenic area.
I think the special thing about Rochester is, you know,
it's not a very big city, but there's such a sense of community here.
It's clean, it's well funded. The schools are fantastic.
It's just a really nice place to live, I would say.
So we have a huge network of people that have
trained here that have a common affiliation with Mayo and
it lasts for a career.
Looking back, I feel like Mayo was the right choice for me personally,
and for anybody else who wants to have a rigorous critical care education and
be able to handle anything when they're done with training,
whether that's somewhere else in the nation or somewhere else in the world.
Having that experience, exposure,
and that name behind your name personally gives you any opportunity in the
world.