Critical Care
University Pediatricians | Michigan
About the Division of Pediatric Critical Care
The Children’s Hospital of Michigan is southeast Michigan's major referral center for children who need the most sophisticated medical and surgical care. Many of these patients spend time in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), which also receives referrals from northern Lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. State-of-the-art support and monitoring of critically ill children is available at the bedside.
The intensive care unit is currently a 32-bed unit with 4 additional extension beds available for additional critically-ill or chronically-ventilated patients. There are more than 2000 admissions per year. Admissions to the ICU include but are not limited to acute respiratory failure; fulminant infectious disease and sepsis; traumatic head injury; status epilepticus; oncologic complications including care of children following bone marrow or stem cell transplant; inborn errors of metabolism; and poisonings. The ICU also provides post-operative care following high-risk surgical procedures including neurosurgery, orthopedic spinal surgery, airway reconstruction, surgery for complex congenital heart disease.
The care of the patients is divided between two teams: (1) post-operative cardiovascular surgical and (2) medical and non-cardiac surgical patients. Each team consists of one ICU attending, one or more ICU fellows, and several rotating general pediatric and emergency medicine residents. The post-operative cardiovascular surgical ICU team performs rounds each day with the cardiac surgeons and their staff, providing multi-disciplinary input for these complicated patients. In addition, a pharmacology Ph.D. also attends rounds with each team each day to ensure optimal and safe pharmacologic management.
The Division of Critical Care Medicine provides sedation for a significant number of procedures including but not limited to transesophageal echocardiography, cardioversion, hematologic-oncologic procedures and for critically-ill patients who undergo MRI, CT scan or interventional radiologic procedures.
Leadership
Division Chief: Ramesh Sachdeva, MD
Dr. Ramesh Sachdeva is a practicing pediatric critical care and sleep medicine physician for over 20 years, and is the Chief of the Division of Critical Care Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan, and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Central Michigan University, College of Medicine. He has a specific interest in neurocritical care; is board certified in pediatric critical care medicine and sleep medicine from the American Board of Pediatrics, and also certified in neurocritical care from the United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties. He is the Associate Editor, Pediatric Critical Care, for the Frontiers in Pediatrics journal.
He has completed two doctorates - PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Texas, School of Public Health in Houston, Texas, and a Doctor of Business Administration in Operational Research/Management Sciences from Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He also completed additional educational programs in Strategic Decision & Risk Management from Stanford University and Artificial Intelligence in Health Care from the MIT Sloan School of Management Executive Program.
Dr. Sachdeva has led the development of new programs to measure and improve healthcare quality in hospitals, universities, and for national organizations, including serving as the Medical Director of Quality Initiatives for the American Academy of Pediatrics at the national level. He has received several grants, including from the NIH, and most recently from AHRQ as the Principal Investigator of a center of excellence national consortium to develop pediatric quality measures.
Dr. Sachdeva completed his legal education and obtained a JD cum laude from Marquette University Law School, where he subsequently served as an Adjunct Professor of Law for several years. Dr. Sachdeva has presented and published extensively both nationally and internationally, and has a specific interest in the intersection of medicine, healthcare quality, and law.
Faculty
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Education
Fellowship Program Director, Critical Care Medicine Fellowship: Ajit Sarnaik, MD
Associate Program Director, Critical Care Medicine Fellowship: Ji-Yeon Kim, MD
Children’s Hospital of Michigan is a tertiary care center located in the heart of Detroit. The hospital serves a diverse, urban and suburban population with a vast array of pathology. It is the pediatric facility for the Detroit Medical Center complex and serves as the center for critical care pediatric fellowship training for Central Michigan University. The hospital has accreditation as a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center.
The intensive care unit is currently a 48 bed unit. Admissions to the ICU include but are not limited to acute respiratory failure; fulminant infectious disease and sepsis; traumatic head injury; status epilepticus; oncologic complications including care of children following bone marrow or stem cell transplant; inborn errors of metabolism; and poisonings. The ICU also provides post-operative care following high-risk surgical procedures including heart, liver, and kidney transplant, neurosurgery, orthopedic spinal surgery, airway reconstruction and surgery for complex congenital heart disease.
Although our program is sponsored by Children's Hospital of Michigan, our fellows are paid via a 501(c)(3) organization, so they are eligible for public service loan forgiveness (PSLF).
