Pediatric Critical Care Scholarly Experience

Our faculty have active and diverse scholarly interests with over 400 publications in peer-reviewed journals. The division is awarded more than $19 million per year in extramural research grant funding.

The Division of Pediatric Critical Care specializes in:

• Clinical investigation
• Quality improvement
• Database coordination and utilization
• Basic science research
• Education scholarship

Scholarly Projects

Fellows become skilled in scholarship through mentored projects in a variety of scientific avenues.   A Scholarship Oversight Committee (SOC) monitors each fellow's research progress, and faculty provide mentoring and enrich research ideas.

Year 1

During the first months of fellowship, fellows focus on identifying mentors, building their SOC, and developing their initial scholarly projects. We facilitate this with formal and informal meetings between possible mentors. While some fellows enter fellowship with largely developed ideas, others lean heavily on their new mentors. We purposefully allow fellows this time to explore different options given our commitment to not placing fellows on a predestined pathway.

Fellows spend the second half of their first year in an iterative process of writing their scholarly proposal and receiving feedback. We are fortunate to have expert, seasoned researchers committed to assisting fellows in this process.

Milestones during the fellow’s first year include an approved scholarly proposal and presentation of their project at a division meeting.

Year 2

Fellows spend the majority of their scholarly time during the second year conducting their research. Many fellows have already started work in earnest during their first year and will complete their initial scholarly project during their second year. Second year milestones include presentation of their work at an institutional meeting and completion of an abstract. We encourage fellows during the second year to present abstracts at regional and national meetings.  

Year 3

Fellows finalize scholarly projects during their third year. Milestones include presentation of their completed work at a regional or national conference and submission of their manuscript to a peer-reviewed publication. Many fellows complete multiple scholarly projects during their fellowship and leave fellowship with several first-author publications.

Scholarship and Research Education

The fellowship includes formal study in statistics and research design, from within and outside the division of pediatric critical care medicine.

Fellows work directly with division statisticians, clinical data managers and research coordinators. Research experts conduct monthly “research on a napkin” and “stat chats” to discuss possible projects. The department also holds weekly research-in-progress seminars.

Research Opportunities

The division houses the Utah Data Coordinating Center (DCC) which supports federally and philanthropically funded network and multi-institutional projects. The DCC presents fellows with the opportunity to learn about unique observational and clinical research projects managed within the DCC. These projects are lead by investigators within the DCC along with experts from across the country. Ongoing data coordination includes The Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN), several rare disease networks, NEMSIS, (which houses pre-hospital research datasets, and public use datasets in other research areas including pediatric critical care. The division also participates in the PALISI network for multicenter trials.

Graduate Coursework

The University of Utah provides graduate courses in medical informatics, biostatistics, epidemiology and basic sciences. We encourage fellows to expand their skills and provide financial and scheduling support to allow fellows to complete classes at the University.

Masters of Clinical Investigation

The Masters of Clinical Investigation is a two-year post-graduate training program in clinical investigation with an emphasis on epidemiology and health services research.

The MSCI is funded by a K30 Clinical Research Curriculum Award from the National Institutes of Health. Our fellows frequently complete this Master’s program. As with other graduate work, we provide financial and scheduling support to allow fellows to complete the program.

Additional Resources

• Institute for Health Care Delivery Research
• Intermountain Healthcare Delivery institute
• Masters of Bioinformatics
• Masters of Science in Clinical Investigation
• The National Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network
• PALISI
• Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network
• Pediatric Research Enterprise