PEM-CAP Fellowship

Pediatric Emergency Medicine – Child Abuse Pediatrics (PEM-CAP) Fellowship Overview

Notice: the PEM-CAP Fellowship is not recruiting for the 2024 recruitment season. 

The PEM-CAP fellowship is a dual subspecialty fellowship program between the University of Utah Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine and the Center for Safe & Healthy Families. Both programs have separate well-established PEM and CAP fellowship programs accredited by the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

The overall goal of the University of Utah Pediatric Emergency Medicine – Child Abuse (PEM-CAP) fellowship program is to produce academically oriented physicians with the knowledge and skills necessary to practice independently as an attending physician in both a pediatric emergency medicine setting as well as an inpatient and/or outpatient child abuse pediatrics setting.

The specific goals and objectives for the PEM-CAP fellowship program incorporate those of the individual University of Utah PEM and CAP fellowships.

Curriculum

The University of Utah PEM-CAP fellowship is four years. In each year, a fellow’s time is split into 6 months of mostly PEM activities, and 6 months of mostly CAP activities.

Sample Block Schedule

Child abuse pediatrics activities

• Safe & Healthy Families is the only child abuse clinical program in the Intermountain West and therefore provides consultation for a large geographic region. Children’s Justice Centers around the entire state of Utah are part of our clinical program, providing valuable experience in seeing children in a variety of settings and providing peer review support to our medical team throughout the system
• Inpatient and emergency department consults, phone triage, physical and sexual abuse clinic in both hospital-based clinics and community-based clinics, medical examiner (ME) office, burn clinic, radiology, toxicology, ophthalmology, pediatric gynecology, foster care clinic, abusive head trauma follow up clinic
  • Fellows take home call on nights and weekends
• Court room observation and testimony, forensic interviewing, participation in multidisciplinary team meetings with community partners (law enforcement, child protective services and prosecutors), Internet Crimes Against Children training, interdisciplinary team staffing on medical child abuse and medical neglect cases, home visits and hotline work with child protective services.

Pediatric emergency medicine activities

• Primary Children’s Hospital (PCH) emergency department (ED) is a Level One Pediatric Trauma center and serves as a tertiary referral center for Utah, eastern Nevada, Southern Utah, western Wyoming, and Montana.
  • 13-14 nine-hour PCH ED shifts per full month, leaving time for research and other non-clinical activities
  • Supervision by 26 PEM board certified and/or eligible faculty.
  • Fellow supervises residents from programs in Pediatrics, Med-Peds, Triple Board, Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine.
• Other rotations
  • PCH pediatric intensive care unit (PICU)
  • Anesthesia service at PCH
  • University of Utah Hospital ED (UUED) – Adult emergency patients
  • University of Utah Toxicology service, with consults at University of Utah Hospital (UUH) and PCH
  • Emergency Medical Services (EMS), based out of UUH
  • Intermountain Medical Center (IMC) Trauma service, caring for patients in the ED, wards, and Shock Trauma ICU

Research activities

• Formal education in research methods, quality improvement training
• Completion of both a research project and a quality improvement project.
• Each fellow will have an Scholarly Oversight Committee (SOC) that is comprised of faculty from both divisions.

Educational experiences

• Child abuse pediatrics
  • Research intensive week held with NIH grant support at the Kempe Center at Children’s Hospital of Colorado that most CAP fellows attend to gain an early foundation for research methods and question development.
  • Twice monthly journal club and didactic sessions that are attended by a large, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary audience from programs around the country.
  • Weekly conference where all cases that were clinically evaluated by any member of the child abuse team are discussed with the entire clinical team, social work, nursing and radiology.
  • Additional topic specific training in court testimony, forensic interviewing and advanced topics related to disease specific conditions.
• Pediatric emergency medicine: weekly PEM Educational Sessions that include the following regularly scheduled conference series
  • PEM Investigational Methods – principles of research project development
  • PEM Journal Club – review of prior month’s PEM-related literature
  • PEM Ultrasound Case Conference – review and practice bedside ultrasound techniques
  • PEM Critical Procedures Conference – simulation-based practice for procedures and critical clinical scenarios
  • PEM Topics - includes PEM-related topics such as QI Methods, Interesting case conference, and PEM patient care topics
  • PEM Core review – Board prep and short topic presentations
  • PEM Case review – focus on ED-style management strategies using case examples
  • PEM Quality Improvement & Patient Safety (QUIPS) – review of difficult cases from the PCH ED.

Application

• Applicants must be graduates of residencies in pediatrics or internal medicine-pediatrics
• Apply via the on-line Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS).
• Via ERAS, indicate interest in PEM-CAP fellowship, found under the University of Utah PEM and CAP fellowship programs
• Timeline
  • Applications may be submitted from early July until the end of August. Current residents may apply during their final year of residency training.
  • Interviews September through first week of November.
• Required Application Materials
  • Personal statement that details your motivation for choosing PEM-CAP and your future career plans
  • Medical school transcripts and board scores
  • Curriculum vitae
  • Three letters of recommendation. One letter must be from your residency program director
• The University of Utah Affiliated Hospitals require all international medical graduates to have ECFMG certification in order to enter a residency program. If you are a non-US citizen, you must also have a J-1 Visa. No other visa will be accepted.