Destination Critical Care: A Roadmap for Academic Clinicians, Educators, and Mentors

The purpose of this article is to provide a framework for academic clinicians, educators, and mentors to advise the emergency medicine (EM) resident with an interest in the field of critical care medicine. Prior articles have detailed the prerequisites and specific training curricula of the distinct critical care pathways, but an approach for the advising faculty member in this climate of increased interest in critical care training has yet to be disseminated. In this article, we assume a starting point of EM residency and focus on pivotal training and decision points that occur along the path to matriculation into a critical care fellowship program. These decision points are described in stepwise fashion with aligned questions to help the EM resident evaluate individual strengths and desires that may help the decision-making process. We also describe considerations of the postfellowship job market, as this also plays a role in the fellowship decision-making process.