Fellows will demonstrate an awareness of and responsiveness to the larger context and system of healthcare by practicing in multiple clinical settings throughout the program. Fellows will rotate through multiple different inpatient and outpatient settings thus receiving the full complement of pulmonary and critical care medicine exposure. The settings include medical ICU, surgical ICU, cardiothoracic surgical ICU, pulmonary consult service on inpatient medical wards, interventional pulmonology, medical stepdown unit, long-term ventilator weaning facility inpatient sleep lab and comprehensive outpatient pulmonary clinic including cystic fibrosis, interstitial lung disease, pulmonary vascular disease and alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency and sleep disorders patient exposure.

The Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship Program is committed to providing a high-quality fellow education throughout the entirety of the program. The Program provides extensive teaching rounds that occur longitudinally throughout all clinical settings for fellows. Teaching rounds will occur three hours daily five days per week. In the Medical and Surgical Intensive Care Units, the teaching rounds will primarily occur at the bedside between faculty, residents, nursing, advanced practice professionals, and fellows. This style of teaching rounds allows for immediate questions and feedback from the fellow regarding specific patient cases. When providing consultations, teaching will occur in a separate room with faculty and fellows. This separate space allows for appropriate patient care, while giving the fellow consistent opportunities for formative feedback and increased learning. Finally, in the office setting, teaching rounds occur in a patient-to-patient format. This allows for true integration of teaching into patient care responsibilities. During all teaching rounds within the program, faculty are committed to providing consistent feedback to each fellow and allowing for opportunities of learning to facilitate individual fellow growth.

Clinical Case/Core Curriculum Topic Conference

Every week, fellows will present challenging cases encountered in the ICU, clinic or pulmonary consult service to the faculty. Discussion will ensue which will include a review of the literature and formulation of treatment plan. On alternating weeks, fellows will be chosen to present a concise review with updated guidelines on pertinent pulmonary and critical care topics such as asthma, COPD, bronchiectasis, sepsis, ARDS, pulmonary vascular disease, toxicology etc.

Radiology Rounds

Monthly, faculty will present interesting radiology cases to fellows where discussion of pathophysiology and pattern recognition will ensue. This will be in conjunction with radiology attendings and other subspecialties including general surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, thoracic oncology and infectious disease.

Journal club

Every other month, fellows will be chosen to present a pertinent pulmonary and critical care medicine Journal club article from high impact journals. Guests will include infectious disease, thoracic oncology and other surgical subspecialties.

Morbidity and mortality

Monthly, fellows will present cases where adverse outcomes occurred in conjunction with the residents and fellows from other academic programs such as general surgery, internal medicine, emergency medicine and neurology. Formal and guided discussion will ensue regarding systems based practice, quality improvement and pathology/autopsy presentation when available.

Sleep conference

Quarterly, fellows will take part in the system sleep conference where cases are presented and discussed with board-certified sleep medicine faculty from different programs in our system. Furthermore, fellows are required to take part in a formal sleep medicine rotation where they take part in an overnight polysomnogram and discuss cases in real-time with one of our sleep medicine boarded physicians in the clinic.

Research/quality improvement conference

At least quarterly, fellows will formally present progress on their individual research projects as well as discuss ongoing quality improvement initiatives and committee activity which includes catheter related bloodstream infection, sepsis mortality, ICU/MSD U throughput, procedural complication related to bronchoscopy, pharmacy and therapeutics, serious safety events and length of stay.

Pathology

Weekly, fellows will take part in thoracic tumor board which is a multidisciplinary discussion on each unique lung cancer case diagnosed at our facility. Faculty involvement includes PCCM, thoracic surgery, medical oncology, radiation oncology, radiation and pathology. Furthermore, starting second year, fellows will take part in a quarterly pathology lecture series focusing on nonmalignant pulmonary disease.

Physiology/PFTs

During the pulmonary consult month the fellows will review and interpret a minimum of 50 pulmonary function tests with the consult attending. The fellows will also be exposed to pulmonary rehabilitation prescriptions and cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET). Discussions regarding PFT interpretation, CPET interpretation and respiratory physiology will ensue. CPET interpretation will be shared with heart failure cardiology and sports medicine.

Ultrasound curriculum

Fellows will receive a 2-day intensive ultrasound course with board-certified ultrasound/critical care echocardiography faculty in the beginning of each academic year. Course offerings throughout the year will be available. Bedside POCUS with teaching will take part daily on pulmonary consult an

The Nuvance Health Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Fellowship Program at Vassar Brothers Medical Center (ACGME 1563514004 ) thanks you for your interest in applying to our program. We accept all applications through ERAS only and participate annually in the NRMP Match Program. We hope you choose to join us.

Requirements: The following items are required for consideration of interview. All items must be received through ERAS application portal:

• Personal Statement
• Current CV
• 3 Letters of Recommendation
• USMLE Step 1 CK or COMLEX Level 1 Score
• USMLE Step 2 CS or COMLEX Level 2 PE Score
• USMLE Step 2 CK or COMLEX Level 2 CE Score
• USMLE Step 3
• Dean’s Letter

Timeline: We will interview candidates during select dates in August, September, and October. Exact dates will be provided to the invited fellowship applicants via email notification.

After reviewing applications in ERAS, we will send out invites via e-mail with available dates for interviewing. All interviews will be done virtually for the 2025-2026 interview season.

Timothy P. Collins, DO, FCCP
Program Director, pulmonary and critical care medicine

Dr. Collins joined the intensivist group at Nuvance Health in 2007. For the next 5 years he worked as an intensivist at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie and North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset in the neuro critical care unit. In 2011 he started the pulmonary practice at Nuvance health. In 2016 he combined to the divisions of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at Vassar Brothers Medical Center and started a pulmonary rehabilitation and adult cystic fibrosis program. Dr. Collins has been Division Chief of pulmonary/critical care/sleep medicine as well as the adult cystic fibrosis program director since 2016. He received his medical degree from New York College of Osteopathic Medicine. He completed his internal medicine training at Albany medical College where he was selected to be a 3rd year Chief resident. He then completed his pulmonary/critical care training at the Lahey clinic in Massachusetts. In 2018 Dr. Collins took on the role of subspecialty education coordinator for critical care at Vassar Brothers Medical Center under the internal medicine residency program and has been actively involved in education since its inception. Dr. Collins interests include pulmonary vascular disease, advanced bronchoscopy, difficult to control asthma, point-of-care ultrasound and quality improvement.