ECMO Fellow – Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation/Extracorporeal Life Support Fellowship
pgy3Fully funded ECMO Fellowship at Vanderbilt University (2 years)
December 1, 2020
Dear Colleagues,
We are writing to inform you of a fully funded two-year position as the Vanderbilt Extracorporeal Life
Support (ECMO/ECLS) Fellow that is open for this upcoming academic year (July 2021) at Vanderbilt
University Medical Center (VUMC). The fellowship is specifically designed for motivated surgical
residents with at least three years of general surgery training in an accredited program or equivalent to
join our ECLS Service. The ECLS Fellow is an integral member of the team whose responsibilities include
patient selection, cannulation, daily management, administrative responsibilities, and thoracic
transplant procurement duties.
Initially, the ECLS Fellow will receive didactic instruction and simulation training at the start of the fellowship to understand the physiology of ECLS, cannulation technique, configuration selection and patient management. The training will transition to patient care with an ECLS attending and will include cannulation, while receiving bedside training in patient management. The Fellow works closely with the ICU teams and is expected to round with them on the ECLS patients while extending his/her knowledge of critical care. Importantly, the Fellow is expected to participate in quality improvement programs, clinical research, large animal research related to organ recovery and mechanical device development. The position is based at VUMC in the Departments of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery. Previous ECLS Fellows have had robust clinical experiences and have been extremely productive academically. All have gone on to secure highly coveted clinical thoracic surgery fellowships at premier US institutions. Their scholarly work has
been published in Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Journal of
Heart and Lung Transplantation, Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, ASAIO, and more.
We are enthusiastically committed to this unique program and see it as a robust experience for future
leaders in academic cardiothoracic surgery.
If you have a resident who is looking for such an opportunity, please contact us.
Sincerely,
Matthew Bacchetta, MD, MBA, MA
H. William Scott, Jr Chair in Surgery#2
Associate Chair, Department of Thoracic Surgery
Surgical Director, Vanderbilt Lung Institute
Director, Laboratory for Organ Recovery, Regeneration
and Replacement
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
609 Oxford House
1313 21st Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37232
615-322-0248
matthew.bacchetta@vumc.org
Ashish S. Shah, MD
Professor of Cardiac Surgery
Alfred Blalock Endowed Director and Chairman of the Department of Cardiac Surgery
ashish.s.shah@vumc.org