Our Program

Children's Nebraska

Unique Features

The Criss Family Heart Center and Children's Nebraska benefit from the unique position of being a free-standing tertiary care facility, integrated with ready access to the full academic infrastructure of a major biomedical research university. The Hubbard Center for Children, opened in 2021, is a brand-new 460,000 square foot state-of-the-art acute care facility that boasts a 32-bed adaptable acuity Cardiac Care Unit, as well as a spacious new cardiac operating room, and new imaging center.

A major strength of our program is size; with limited case competition from other trainees, we can afford our cardiac fellow exposure to essentially all cardiac surgical and interventional procedures at our center. We are confident that our trainees will graduate with case volumes in excess of proposed ACGME targets.

Our faculty is committed to a graduated responsibility philosophy, wherein the fellow will be thoughtfully and sequentially mentored toward independent practice. Pedagogically, we have aligned our didactic curriculum with adult learning theory, and use a series of Socratic, problem-based modules to cover the field of congenital cardiac anesthesia in an informal, collegial manner with faculty, fellows, and CRNAs.

Duration

We currently offer a hybrid one-year program, with four months spent as an attending in general pediatric anesthesiology, followed by eight months of formal training experience in cardiac anesthesia. The curriculum and focus are largely adaptable to the fellow’s goals and interests. ACGME accreditation for this specialty received inaugural approval in 2021, and we are actively pursuing accreditation for a full 12-month program.