The Obstetric Anesthesiology Fellowship program at UT Southwestern Medical Center is a 12 month ACGME accredited training program devoted to the comprehensive anesthetic management of women during pregnancy and the puerperium. During this training the fellow will be exposed to various aspects of obstetrics anesthesiology, including low and high-risk obstetric cases, interpretation of fetal heart rate monitoring, antepartum fetal testing and high-risk antepartum care, clinical research and neonatology.

Goals and Objectives

The goal of the obstetric anesthesia fellowship is to foster and develop obstetric anesthesia skills in the high-risk parturient as well as to enrich the practice of clinical obstetric anesthesia by developing an academic and research-oriented approach to patient care. The objectives of the fellowship are to complete the required clinical rotations, thereby accruing the knowledge and skills needed to take care of high-risk deliveries. In addition, the research rotations will allow the fellow to obtain the necessary academic focus inherent in a university-practice setting. And finally, each fellow must either publish a case report, original research article, or present an abstract at a national meeting during their fellowship year under the guidance of an obstetric anesthesia faculty member.

Clinical Sites

Parkland Health and Hospital System (PHHS)
William P. Clements, Jr. Hospital (CUH)

Site Rotations
 

• PMH Obstetrics Anesthesiology (7 months)—clinical patient care of low-to-high risk parturients

• CUH Obstetric Anesthesiology (1 month)—clinical patient care of low-to-high risk parturients

• PMH Maternal-Fetal Medicine Rotation (2 weeks)—antenatal care of high-risk deliveries, and care of post-partum patients who have developed obstetric complications.

• PMH Nursery/NICU (2 weeks)—routine resuscitation and care of the neonate. This rotation will include neonatal resuscitation protocol training (NRP).

• PMH Research (3 months)—The fellow is assigned a research faculty mentor at the beginning of their fellowship who will oversee this 3-month period. The research may be laboratory, clinical, or focused on quality improvement measures within the institution. If desired, this research could also be focused on obstetric anesthesia simulation for the 3-month period.

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Clinical Experience

The clinical experience of the fellowship will occur at 2 hospitals—Parkland Hospital and William P. Clements, Jr. University Hospital. The first seven months of the fellowship will be spent doing clinical patient care. The fellow will work mostly days, but will take a nominal amount of overnight calls with obstetric anesthesia faculty members. The fellow will do their own cases, but will also assist the obstetric anesthesia faculty members at a “junior faculty” level in order to learn the teaching process to teach junior anesthesia residents on their rotation. While at University Hospital, the fellow will work one-on-one with the obstetric anesthesia faculty member doing high-risk obstetric anesthesia cases in a private practice setting.

Research

The Fellow is involved in providing analgesia and anesthesia to parturients during labor, assisted vaginal deliveries, cesarean deliveries, and other obstetric procedures. The Fellow is given vast opportunities to master several clinical techniques unique to the practice of Obstetric Anesthesiology. Our obstetric unit comprises a significant high-risk population of parturients with obstetric disorders as well as cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological, and endocrine disorders. The Fellow is responsible for the assessment and management of such patients, which includes weekly multidisciplinary high-risk rounds involving obstetricians, neonatologists, and anesthesiologists.

Didactics

The fellow is required to attend and participate in the Department’s Grand Rounds Lecture Series, Monthly OB Lecture Webinar Series, the combined OB and OB Anesthesiology Conference, Mock Orals, M&M Conference, Fellow Research Lecture Series and Journal Club.